Vietnamese government to change detainment procedures

With just weeks left until President Bush visits Hanoi for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November, the Vietnamese government has hinted that it will abolish the administrative detention decree 31/cp, according to an Agence France-Presse article. The decree, signed into power in 1997, gives the government the right to detain people for two years without bringing charges for the cause of “protecting national security.” Michael Orona, the State Department’s deputy director of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, said of the decision, “This would mean that the government cannot use this decree to detain an individual any longer and that they would have to actually provide a rule-of-law access and due process.” Orona also said that only two political prisoners now remain in prison, because ahead of Bush’s visit, the Vietnamese government has released three prisoners of concern already. The two still in prison are Nguyen Vu Binh and Phan Van Ban.

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