Brussels, 07/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - Last Thursday after its plenary session in Brussels, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on human rights in three Asian countries. During the session, the Parliament invited the Council and Commission to assess policies implemented in the three countries - Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam - since the signing of cooperation and association agreements and in the light of the first article of these agreements which stresses the essential nature of democratic principles and fundamental rights.
Cambodia. The Parliament, which notes a general deterioration of citizens' freedoms and an increase in the repression of political dissidents, mainly denounces the lifting of parliamentary immunity for three opposition deputies, arrests and detention of journalists and teachers and accusations against the trade unions. It calls for the independent tribunal for the Khmers Rouges, as decided with the UN in June 2003, to be set in place as soon as possible and invites the Council and Commission to create a working group on human rights, governance and institution-building. The resolution suggests that an ad hoc EP delegation should go to Cambodia as quickly as possible to assess the situation of parliamentarians held, as well as media representatives and trade union leaders, in order to obtain the release of political prisoners.
Laos. Parliament, which notes that international observers (mainly those from Amnesty International) have been refused free access to Laotian territory, calls for this access to be guaranteed in order to allow humanitarian relief organisations in particular to go to the political prisoners (including the leaders of the 26 October 1999 Movement), to the Hmong (whose humanitarian situation remains appalling) and to all the ethnic and religious minorities (including Christians incarcerated for not having given up their faith). The EP calls on the Laotian authorities to implement programmes allowing the integration of Hmong and other minorities, and to ratify without delay the international pact on civil and political rights.
Vietnam. The EP welcomes the action plan adopted in June by Vietnam for development of relations with the EU in the run up to 2010, but denounces the restrictions to freedom of the press (establishment in 2004 of a police force for censure of Internet and imprisonment of “cyber-dissidents” for spying), religious repression and the “confiscation of ancestral land” of Montagnards (or “highlanders” living on the high plateaux), systematic persecution of the unified Buddhist church in Vietnam and restrictions imposed on other religious (despite the new law of 2004 on faith and religion) as well as “the terrible fate of prisoners in the 3A camp in Xuan Loc”. The Parliament invites the Vietnamese authorities to pursue an authentic dialogue involving all categories of the population in the country's development on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. It above all stresses the recognition of all churches, release of political prisoners, an authentically free press, and calls for the repatriation, without risk for their security, of the Montagnards that have fled Vietnam (the High Commissioner for Refugees and international NGOs should be able to ”correctly oversee the fate of repatriated persons”).