Are Vietnam and China coordinating repressive tactics as part of their efforts to build closer ties? It’s not an entirely flippant question on a day that sees criminal charges brought against each country’s leading democracy activists.
Diplomats were today barred from the trial of dissident Liu Xiao-bo when it started in Beijing. Liu has advocated democratic reform and political pluralism as a co-author and signatory of Charter 08.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s communist authorities have charged Le Cong Dinh, a prominent human rights lawyer, with trying to overthrow the state, a crime that carries the death penalty. At least two other colleagues have been similarly charged.
He is accused of “colluding with Vietnamese reactionary groups and hostile forces in exile” to subvert the communist regime. Dinh has embarrassed the ruling Communist Party, “using his court appearances on behalf of dissidents and free-speech advocates to agitate for democracy.”
Analysts say the arrests are meant to deter demands for reform in the run-up to the next Communist Party Congress, due in early 2011.
“It’s a shot across the bow in advance of the congress to tell people to keep their heads down,” said Carlyle B. Thayer, a specialist on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. “Now is not the time for you to advocate political liberalization.”‘
The regime recently imprisoned several activists for promoting democracy and defending the country’s territorial claims in the Eastern Sea. Exiled pro-democracy reformers said the trials confirmed that Hanoi criminalizes free speech and violates international human rights covenants to which it is a signatory.
Vietnam is experiencing “a sharp reversal of what has been a move toward more-open markets and a more-open society,” a Wall Street Journal report suggests.
It cites Thayer’s view that “conservative factions in the ruling Politburo are tightening their grip on the country as Vietnam’s economic worries—especially inflation and fallout from currency devaluations—grow.”
[...] Continue reading here: Democracy on trial in China and Vietnam [...]
It is highly unlikely to see any change in this regions without a massive change of governmship. I mean literally-the current regime, especially in China was allowed to get way with too many offences against humanity without any consequence, so there is a little hope that they will have any motivation to reform now. Especially given the fact that the ruling class there is receiving the tremendous benefits from a near-slave labor of own compatriots which is China’s biggest contribution to the international market.
Unfortunately for rest of the population, for the ruling class of that region the democratic reform will be like killing an hen who laid golden eggs…