ABCNews - Internet Ventures
WIRE:04/06/2000 09:34:00 ET
GENEVA (Reuters) - A human rights group Thursday accused Vietnam of confiscating and destroying copies of a book denouncing re-education camps and also said the death penalty was on the rise in the Communist country.
Vo Van Ai, president of the Vietnam Committee for the Defense of Human Rights and vice-president of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights, said the culture and information ministry had issued an order on March 16 to destroy the book "An Account of Year 2000" by Hanoi writer Bui Ngoc Tan.
"This book evokes the conditions in the Vietnamese gulags and denounces the policy of re-education which is assassination by hunger, exhaustion and moral harassment," Vo told the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
"All people implicated in the publication and distribution of this book, including the director of the publishing house Thanh Nien, have been heavily punished and the writer has been subjected to interrogation," he added.
The latest censure followed Vietnam's restrictive amendments to its press laws last May, which have curtailed the freedom of expression, according to Vo. "This measure also guarantees the impunity of members of the Communist Party implicated in affairs of corruption, fraud and various trafficking."
Vietnam is handing down "an increasing number of death sentences," reaching the "sad record" of 194 last year, he said.
The 53-member state U.N. forum is holding its annual six-week session in Geneva until April 28 to examine violations across the world.