Dissidents in Vietnam - Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Welcome to our new CFTU website!

We’ve designed it to keep you better informed about developments in the continuing struggle of workers everywhere to establish and maintain the right of Freedom of Association – the right to form and join unions of their own choosing, run by people they elect.

The CFTU has been active in recent years in attempts to assist workers in Cuba struggling to assert that right – in the face of their government’s insistence that only one union, guided by the Communist Party, can represent them,  and against the background of continuing imprisonment and harassment of those who think otherwise.

Cuba is not the only country in the world denying workers their rights.  Sadly the list is long – Burma, Vietnam, North Korea, China -  to cite a few.  But too many trade unionists in the free world are unwilling to speak out, apparently believing that somehow these regimes will transform themselves into democratic societies and that through contact with free world unions, the non-representative unions in those police states will remake themselves into legitimate unions. Such a belief flies in the face of 90 years of experience to the contrary.

The recent hunger-strike death in a Cuban prison of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a 42-year old brick mason serving a 26-year sentence for his political activities, and the current hunger strike of  dissident journalist Guillermo Farinas, provide eloquent testimony to the determination of those heroes to see their country free and democratic and observant of all the rights of free people.

Our committee believes that neither dictatorships nor their hand-maiden unions ever yield power willingly and that free trade unions must not be complicit in the denial of freedom of association to workers.  Rather, we believe that those who are joined in the struggle to assert workers’ rights in the face of dictators, those who risk imprisonment and harassment, need and deserve our moral and material support.  We hope you will join us in those struggles.

Tom Donahue, CFTU Chair

CFTU’s Chair, Thomas R. Donahue, recently contacted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, for help in gaining freedom for Macdiel Bachiller Pedroso, the 21-year-old son of a Cuban labor union official now living in exile.

Pedroso has been imprisoned in Cuba for more than four years for the crime of “dangerousness.” The young man is the son of Aurelio Bachiller, the General Secretary of the Independent National Workers’ Federation of Cuba  (CONIC).  The elder Bachiller now lives in the United States.

“There is no doubt that the son is being punished for the sins of the father, the most recent of which was to testify before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and which occasioned Macdiel’s most recent arrest,” Donahue stated in a letter to Mrs. Clinton. “The Cuban government apparently is going to charge the young man with another false charge to extend his sentence.”

Donahue asked Mrs. Clinton to forcefully raise the issue of Macdiel’s imprisonment with the Cuban government, as well as the cases of the other independent trade unionists and democracy activists still suffering in Cuban prisons.

In a letter to Mrs. Clinton, Aurelio Bachiller stated that in March 2009, his son began the process of emigrating to the United States to join his family. Subsequent to his application, the young man was detained by the Cuban government many times, each time based on the testimony of false witnesses. All of that was preparation to send him to prison. Soon after receiving a visa to travel to the U.S., he was arrested and accused of violent robbery and possession of firearms.

“The Prosecutor is asking for 20 years’ imprisonment despite the fact that all the charges are false,” Bachiller told Mrs. Clinton. The only crime my son has committed was being the son of a father who is an independent trade unionist who continues to fight for worker rights in Cuba.

“My son is now being pressed to sign a declaration of guilt in exchange for his liberty – a common practice in Cuba for unjustly charged persons. My son is now alone, without support, in the hands of a government that will use any means to stay in power. By forcing him to sign this statement, the Cuban authorities wish to compromise Macdiel’s possibility to go to the U.S. to join his family so that they will be able to use him as blackmail to try to stop my work.”

In its summer issue, Dissent magazine, published in New York, breaks the silence on efforts to quell pro-democracy movements in Vietnam with an article titled “Vietnamese Dissidents: Absent from the Western Mind.”

Dustin Roasa, a free lance writer based in Cambodia, describes the most recent chapter in the history of Vietnamese dissidents, which began on April 8, 2006, when a group of activists posted on-line a “Manifesto 2006 on Freedom and Democracy.” The Dissent article was featured in a blog called Human Rights for Workers.

The “manifesto” was signed by more than 2,000 Vietnamese, including lawyers, Buddhist monks, Catholic priests, ex-Communist Party members, writers, and intellectuals from all parts of the country. They became known as Bloc 8406, after the date it was posted.

In a visit to Vietnam in the winter of 2007, Roasa talked with several Bloc 8406 members and found their mood pessimistic. The movement was under siege and losing members to prison. It did not gain the attention of the foreign media.

“The dissidents I know hope for foreign involvement in their cause,” Doasa writes . The hope was that media interest would pressure the Party to listen to dissidents like Nguyen Dan Que, who after 20 years in prison is under house arrest in Saigon and has refused offers of exile to the United States.

In the summer of 2008, the government quietly gave a multibillion-dollar land concession in the Central Highlands to a bauxite mining company in China, which brought in thousands of “guest workers” from China. General Vo Nguyen Gap, 98, criticized the concession. So did some bloggers. “Few issues unite Vietnamese than suspicion of their large neighbor to the North,” Doasa points out.

A new wave of repression followed. At least 60 pro-democracy activists have been arrested since last October. One was a 41-year-old lawyer and graduate of Tulane, Le Cong Dinh, who gained fame for representing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in a trade dispute with the United State (over catfish dumping) and winning it. He also took on the job of defending dissidents in court, and began blogging about the bauxite mine and other government concessions to the People’s Republic of China.

On January 30, 2010, Le Cong Dinh was sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of conducting propaganda against the state.

A wave of strikes in Chinese factories recently has highlighted the lack of authentic rights for Chinese workers and other inequities in Chinese society. In response, the Communist regime is launching a “Strike-Hard” campaign.

According to China analysts, the recent wave of strikes is a reflection of simmering social discontent and unrest as a result of social inequality, injustice, and rising inflation, The Epoch Times reports. Many of the striking workers are not only demanding pay raises, but are also asking for independent unions.

If the strikes escalate, they may threaten China’s position as the factory of the world, and thus threaten the communist regime’s popular legitimacy and survival. However, experts say that responding to the workers demands with brute force will not work.

On June 13, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced it would launch a seven-month-long “Strike-Hard” campaign to “crack down on violent crimes that seriously affect the public’s sense of security” as China goes through an economic transition and social transformation.

Xu Yimin, a migrant workers’ rights activist in Jilin Province, in his blog called for an independent labor union, stating that the string of suicides at Foxconn and the subsequent strikes across the country were mainly due to “workers having no voice, rights, or means of expression.”

New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) said in a June 24 report that last year, migrant rural workers from northeastern Jilin Province applied to authorities to form their own union but were rejected. Around the same time, the state-run All-China Federation of Trade Unions released a report warning that young migrant workers are increasingly willing to make demands from the state, a development construed as “a test for stability in the country.”

Labor unions in China are state-controlled and generally side with the management and local communist officials, instead of representing workers.

The Mexican miners’ union, Los Mineros, has put out a call for support for its 1200 members facing state brutality and violence aimed at breaking their two year strike. The 1200 miners have been on strike since July 2007 at the Cananea mine over health and safety and other contract violations. Grupo Mexico, the mining giant which operates Cananea, and the Mexican government have continuously tried to end the strike and crush the union. They have threatened and jailed union leaders, illegally frozen union bank accounts and failed to investigate or prosecute assassinations of union members.

On February 11, a federal court gave Grupo Mexico permission to fire the striking workers and terminate the labour agreement. The government has threatened to use armed force to gain control of Cananea. The Los Mineros members at Cananea are resolved to continue occupying the mine until a fair labour agreement is reached. The International Metalworkers’ Federation, which the EPMU is a member of, has called on the Mexican government to: * Release all union funds illegally seized by the government; * Lift all charges still pending against Napoleon Gomez Urrutia and other members of the union. * Prosecute in a court of law, immediately and transparently, all those responsible in the corruption of documents and facts; and * Investigate Grupo Mexico’s involvement in the murder of Reynaldo Hernandez Gonzolez and the detention and torture of 20 union members in Nacozari, Sonora.

Thailand will imprison and hand out heavy fines to any migrant workers who attend mass anti-government rallies in Bangkok this weekend, the labour minister said today. Migrants would be subject to a five-year jail term and fines of up to 100,000 baht ($3358) if found among protesters loyal to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra who are due to gather in the capital on Sunday. “Employers will (also) be fined up to 100,000 baht for each migrant worker and (the migrant’s) work permit will be cancelled immediately,” Labour Minister Phaitoon Kaeothong said.

Thaksin’s supporters, known as “Red Shirts” for the colour they wear, are expected to hold one of their biggest ever rallies to protest against a Supreme Court decision two weeks ago that seized most of the tycoon’s fortune. They are also demanding that the government quit and end what they perceive as a two-tier system of justice that gives preference to the country’s Bangkok-based elites in the bureaucracy, military and palace. The government has warned that the demonstrations could turn violent and is expected to endorse on Tuesday a tough security act that places the army in charge of handling the rallies. Thailand’s economy relies on workers from its poorer neighbours, but in recent months the country has become tougher on immigration at its borders and has been accused of widespread mistreatment of migrants. Amnesty International’s Thailand expert Benjamin Zawacki said the kingdom should not deny migrants their basic rights to express their political views by attending the rallies. “Regardless of your legal status in a country, it should not affect your human rights, which include freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association,” Mr Zawacki said. Rights groups have denounced a new migrant registration policy brought in this month that forces more than one million workers to verify their nationalities with their home governments. They say the policy puts the vulnerable group in greater danger of deportation and extortion by unscrupulous authorities.