Vietnam’s Communist Party leaders have issued a sweeping directive aimed at clamping down on civil society, including trade unions and labor activism, even as it pledges to uphold human rights at the United Nations, according to a rights watchdog.
Among the many provisions of the order known as Directive 24, officials are asked to closely monitor trade unions and labor disputes, and ensure that new labor groups are not established based on ethnicity or religion, Bangkok-based The 88 Project, which obtained the directive, said on March 1.
“The mask is off. Vietnam’s leaders are saying that they intend to violate human rights as a matter of official policy,” Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project, said in a statement. “They are now directly implicated in abuses by the state and should be isolated, not embraced, by the international community.”
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