PARIS, Feb 1 (AFP): Exiled Vietnamese dissident Doan Viet Hoat called Monday on France to link economic aid to his country to an improvement in press freedom and the human rights situation.
"If there is no freedom, especially freedom of the press, there is no transparency and we can't efficiently fight the curse of corruption and bureaucracy," said Hoat, speaking in an interview with AFP ahead of a meeting with an advisor to French President Jacques Chirac.
His trip to France marks the first leg of a European tour that will also take him to Germany and Holland.
"The Vietnamese government claims it is fighting corruption and bureaucracy but since there is no press freedom or any opposition their campaign amounts to nothing but empty words," he added.
Authorities in Vietnam also need to be pressured into accepting the creation of independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups, the prominent dissident said.
Hoat, 55, a journalist and university professor, was released in September from a Hanoi prison, where he was serving a 15-year sentence for publishing a pro-democracy newsletter. He was freed as part of a mass amnesty of more than 5,200 prisoners.
He has since been living in the United States, which granted him political refugee status.
A university professor in Saigon, Hoat was first imprisoned in 1978 for 12 years for dissenting from the country's communist rule.
Released in 1988, he was again arrested in 1993 for publishing a reformist newsletter and sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence, which was later reduced to 15 years.
He spent his last five years in solitary confinement.