Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Upholding human rights is a virtue that members of this place and the wider Australian community have always seen as a cornerstone of a well-respected and functioning democracy. Unfortunately, this isn't so in other countries around the world. Earlier this week I attended a briefing with the Australian Director of Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson, and the executive director of the Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment, Mr Hoi Trinh, to learn more about the human rights atrocities being committed in Vietnam.

My electorate of Oxley has one of the highest number of Vietnamese people anywhere in the country, many of whom I'm very proud to call my close friends. They are loyal, hardworking and dedicated members of the community who make an invaluable contribution to the Australian way of life. I work closely with a number of Vietnamese organisations, including the Queensland chapter of Vietnamese Community in Australia, with my close friend Dr Cuong Bui, and the Vietnamese Senior Citizens Association. Through these organisations and their members, I am already aware of the continued attacks on Vietnamese people who campaign for human rights. As a result, I've written to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, regarding these violations against human rights activists to ask that Australia do more to see that these people are protected.

Last week I also had the honour of speaking at the opening of the International Youth Conference in Sydney before 300 young activists. Conference speakers included representatives from the United Nations and Amnesty International as well as social campaigners all striving for the same goal—a pathway for freedom in Vietnam. This will be a long and difficult struggle for those bearing the cost of human rights violations.

At the briefing this week with Ms Pearson and Mr Trinh we heard stories of the atrocities being committed every day in Vietnam. In their recent report No country for human rights activists: assaults on bloggers and democracy campaigners in Vietnam the organisation listed examples of horrific crimes committed to people merely seeking justice. These people include human rights activist Nguyen Van Dai. On the morning of 6 December 2015, he delivered a lecture about the rights enshrined in Vietnam's constitution at Van Loc parish in Nam Dan district in celebration of international Human Rights Day. That afternoon he left for Hanoi, accompanied by fellow activists Ly Quang Son, Vu Van Minh and Le Manh Thang. During the course of the journey, their taxi was forcibly stopped by a group of a dozen men wearing civilian clothing and disguised by surgical masks. Nguyen Van Dai said the men dragged them out of the taxi and severely beat them. Three other activists were also severely beaten.

It's stories like this, and much worse, that I've been told that prove the need for greater protection for human rights activists in Vietnam. I'll continue to work closely with my local Vietnamese community and the Australian Vietnamese community to see an end to these terrible acts of violence.