With regards to Vietnam, the department spent more than 50 pages looking at the practices of almost all fundamental human rights in the country, including the right to freedom of speech, press, assembly and democracy as well as policies on these issues. According to the report, all political opposition movements in Vietnam are prohibited and so-called dissidents continue to be arrested and detained. The report goes on to state that the National Assembly elections in May 2007 were “neither free nor fair”.

These are biased and groundless allegations about the situation in Vietnam. In Vietnam, no one is arrested for holding different political and religious views. Only those who act illegally face legal charges.

In May 2007 National Assembly elections were a major national political event. Vietnamese voters went to the poll to cast their ballots in a free, fair and democratic manner to fulfil their civic responsibility and obligation. This was acknowledged by many foreigners, including politicians from western countries, while visiting Vietnam on the occasion of the elections.

Country Director of the World Bank in Vietnam Ajay Chibber has stated that no place in Vietnam has been left behind in poverty reduction efforts. The country has achieved equitable development in education, trade and infrastructure. Notably, the literacy rate in Vietnam has risen to 95 percent, which is higher than in other dynamically developing economies such as China and India. About 95 percent of the households have been connected to the national power grid compared to 50 percent in the 1990s. The proportion of the population living within a 2km or 20 minutes walk of an all-weather road has increased to about 90 percent. This means Vietnam has gradually narrowed the development gap between rural and urban areas to ensure ethnic groups in the far-flung areas have not left behind in the development process.

It is obvious that Vietnamese people enjoy all the fundamental human rights stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other United Nations human rights treaties of which Vietnam is signatory. Why did the US Department of State jump to conclusions that the human rights situation in Vietnam is bad and that it has not yet to meet international standards? What lies behind this report is nothing more than an excuse, using US-style human rights as a pretext to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries.

While giving itself the right to judge the human rights situation in other countries, in its report, the Department of State failed to look at human rights violations in the US. Last week, President George W. Bush vetoed legislation that legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists bans the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) from using inhumane methods such as waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists, which in effect, legalise torture techniques on detainees.

The US’s human rights violations have also been reported elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vietnamese people will never forget the inhumane crimes that the US army committed during the Vietnam War several decades ago. In an operation on March 16, 1968, US soldiers killed more than 500 innocent civilians in My Lai and My Khe hamlet in Son My village, Son Tinh district, central Quang Ngai province. Local people still keep photos featuring that bloody massacre which reminds them of constant efforts to build and defend national sovereignty as well as fundamental human rights – the rights to live in peace and stability, work and enjoy a happy life.