> The Vietnamese government is actually pretty good in terms of freedoms.
Wait, what? They recently kidnapped an ex-party member in germany. It was 2017 or so. I can't believe that a country which honors you freedom would do something like this.
Wait, what? They recently kidnapped an ex-party member in germany. It was 2017 or so. I can't believe that a country which honors you freedom would do something like this.
There is much more freedom of speech than in China, or compared to other SEA countries (maybe except for Thailand, but that has a military coup every 2 years in average).
There is no censorship of foreign media, internet is basically free. You can say whatever you want and nobody cares, people complain about party and officials on Facebook constantly.
On the other hand, they keep arresting people for public protests (google “formosa protests vietnam”), for crazy numbers of years (10, 20 years for protesting). And there are rumors censorship of internet is coming - they made a new law just this January that will allow them to censor Facebook or Google unless they host data here and give data about citizens to the government. It is a question how will they proceed; the party is similarly opaque to Chinese party.
All in all though, it’s around better than other countries in region on average or China but worse than Europe, US, or even Taiwan
You can complain about Party, but once you start actually organizing protests, they will come knocking. But since the economy is growing so crazy, people are generally happy.
and of course as a white expat you are put on a pedestal here and a bit untouchable. It’s bad but that’s how it is.
Don't judge by the anomalies, judge by the everyday life for regular people.
Should they get a court hearing? Probably. Is that practical, in some cases, if the person could be apprehended. Otherwise it would just be a pony show with a predetermined outcome, making no difference.
Sometimes, they kill citizens and then effectively say shit happens.
i.e. China sending a drone and blowing up a US citizens car, killing him and his family, somewhere in the middle of US and just saying that they were terrorists and a threat to China's security; but not not providing any evidence as that is classified.
Perhaps it would have been better in the specific case to first revoke the person's citizenship?
Revoking citizenship or at least leaving persons stateless is not allowed under UN-Charta afaik. Even then, would you blatantly kill (or better, murder) people? That's not rule of law, but rule of jungle. And as uncivilized as it gets.
I don't see a way to capture and try such an individual without having more citizens put in harm's way, or killed too. If the individual is in a training camp that is targeted and happens to be killed as well - I personally don't think anything of it. But that is starkly different than assassinating some individual in their apartment or hotel, or whatever. To me, one is warfare, and the other is murder - I do make that distinction.
Perhaps we must agree to disagree.
I watched an HK detainee get tortured in a hospital in horror, then remembered we kill thousands of unarmed people every couple years without any trial (many of whom are innocent) and 50-60% of victims are either mentally or physically disabled in some way. Many of them get tortured in similar ways if they make it to prison.
In a different framing, the US looks pretty horrible in comparison to China. It's just that we have gotten used to our own brand of stink.
Phrases like "6th leading cause" contain no information.
Is that 5% or 0.01%?
There is no way of knowing, and depends entirely on how deaths are categorized in some unknown underlying classification system.
No it's not.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/233310/distribution-of-t...
Only 215 black people were killed by police last year.
>https://www.theroot.com/here-s-how-many-people-police-killed...
https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Vietnam/economic-fr...
So how does that source characterize Vietnam? "Mostly Unfree", 128 in their ranking of countries. And Hong Kong... "Free", 1 in their rankings... though we'll see how well that holds up over the next few years. So not so close to Hong Kong.
Heritage goes on to say...
"Background
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam remains a Communist dictatorship characterized by repression of dissenting political views and the absence of civil liberties. Economic liberalization began in 1986 with doi moi (renovation) reforms to transition to a more industrial and market-based economy. Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in 2007 and signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2018. Vietnam’s economic growth, based on tourism and manufactured exports, was among the world’s fastest during the decade-long tenure of former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. In 2016, Dung was forced out after losing election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. State-managed economic liberalization continues under the leadership of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong."
So while they do say that things are getting better... they aren't exactly calling it Hong Kong just yet.