Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have spoken in this place on a number of occasions on behalf of the Vietnamese people who have settled in Australia and call my electorate of Stirling home. The majority of these people fled the oppressive and undemocratic regime in Vietnam. In particular, today I want to speak about the plight of people who, although they are not citizens of Australia, have been held by the Vietnamese government since their arrest on 17 November 2007 and who were tried on charges of terrorism yesterday. They were arrested as they were preparing to distribute leaflets promoting democracy through non-violent means. Those arrested were American citizens Nguyen Quoc Quan and Leon Truong, French citizen Nguyen Thi Thanh Van, Thai resident Somsak Khunmi and Vietnamese citizen Nguyen The Vu. They are all supporters of the Viet Tan, which is the Vietnam Reform Party. On 20 November 2007 police arrested another supporter of the Viet Tan, Vietnamese citizen Nguyen Viet Trung.

It was not until five days after the Viet Tan released a media statement regarding the plight of their members and supporters that the Vietnamese communist authorities publicly acknowledged the arrest of these six people. In the days following the arrests there were a number of incidents, including security police allegedly finding a gun in the checked baggage of two Vietnamese American tourists at the Saigon airport and announcing that they were also supporters of the Viet Tan. At the same time, official state media accused those arrested of being terrorists.

These arrests resulted in the governments of the United States, France, Norway and Switzerland, as well as our own government in Australia, issuing strong protests to the Vietnamese government against the arrests of these pro-democracy supporters. On 11 December, after mounting international pressure not only from foreign governments but also from a number of international human rights groups, the government in Hanoi released Leon Truong and the couple who were allegedly found with a gun in their luggage. Four months after the initial arrests, on 4 April this year, one of the other detainees was also released.

This brings us to today. After six months of detention and restrictions of visits by family members and their respective consulates, the remaining three detainees will stand trial in closed-door proceedings on charges of terrorism. This morning we have found out that, not surprisingly, all of the accused were found guilty. Nguyen Quoc Quan was sentenced to six months jail but will be deported from Vietnam on the weekend as he has already served his time. The regime in Vietnam need to recognise that protesting peacefully in support of democracy is not a terrorist offence. I urge them to treat these people humanely and with respect for their human rights.