Why State Dept. Can’t Find “Credible” Reports Of Vietnam’s Human Rights Abuses

The U.S. State Department released its latest country report on Vietnam on March 7. Secretary of State Rice introduces the annual exercise, saying,

With the release of this year's reports we are recommitting ourselves to help new democracies deliver on their people's aspirations for a better life. We are recommitting ourselves to stand with those courageous men and women who struggle for their freedom and their rights. And we are recommitting ourselves to call every government to account that still treats the basic rights of its citizens as options rather than, in President Bush's words, the non-negotiable demands of human dignity.

Yet, within the Vietnam report, although saying, “The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an authoritarian state ruled by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)….The government's human rights record remained unsatisfactory,” repeatedly it’s said that State could not find “credible” reports for many of the cases of torture and imprisonment reported by various human right organizations.

Reporters Without Borders “voiced dismay today at the news that the Vietnamese government has decided not to renew BBC World Service correspondent Bill Hayton’s press visa.”

Why?

Hayton seems to have irritated the authorities by his coverage of the repression of dissidents.

It doesn’t irritate the communist-profiteers when it’s reported how cheap its labor pool is, to entice foreign investors and enrich Hanoi’s rulers and lackeys. It, also, doesn’t seem to irritate most MSM that they are only permitted to be stooges for Hanoi and Western businessmen’s enrichment, at the price of oppression.