While the majority of the media bandwidth in the past week has been focused on the terrorist attacks in Paris, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the ongoing circus of the Republican Presidential primary, a small but significant event has happened in Vietnam that presents itself as a test case for President Obama and his promotion of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest trade deal in the history of the world.
On November 22, 2015, Ms. Do Thi Minh Hanh, an advocate from the fledgling independent labor rights organization, Viet Labor, was arrested and brutally beaten.
Her crime? She and a group of Nike factory workers concerned about the unfair termination of 2,000 employees at their plant were meeting with a lawyer. Police crashed the meeting, threw out the workers, threatened the lawyer with arrest if he represented them, punched Ms. Do in the ribs, and took her phone. After throwing her into their vehicle, they continued punching her in the face. When they arrived at the police station, the beating continued. Ms. Do’s Viet Labor colleague, Truong Minh Duc was also soon arrested after posting videos and messages from nearby, and his phone taken. The next day, they were released from police custody to a hospital.
The arrest of Ms. Do for simply exercising her right to advocate for better conditions for Nike’s workers, lays bare the realities that emerging independent trade unionists face in Vietnam as well as the Vietnamese regime’s outrageous, “We say one thing, but do another” game with Washington. These are realities that the Obama administration must address if they are to have U.S. lawmakers and the American public believe that the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal will bring about true reforms with regard to labor rights in Vietnam.
In May of this year, when President Obama was making his hard pitch to the American people for fast-track authority for the TPP deal, he said the following at, of all places, Nike’s global headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
So when you look at a country like Vietnam, under this agreement, Vietnam would actually, for the first time, have to raise its labor standards. It would have to set a minimum wage. It would have to pass safe workplace laws to protect its workers. It would even have to protect workers’ freedom to form unions -- for the very first time. That would make a difference. That helps to level the playing field and it would be good for the workers in Vietnam, even as it helps make sure that they’re not undercutting competition here in the United States.
President Obama is correct. Protecting Vietnamese workers’ freedom to form independent unions is important - to those workers and also to American jobs. But those protections must start NOW. Yes, future violations after the deal is struck must result in an immediate cut of trade benefits, but Vietnam must show good faith before it starts getting such benefits.
President Obama must immediately demand that Vietnam publicly prosecute those who arrested and beat up the aforementioned labor advocates. While the President is at it, he must not forget Ms. Do's colleagues, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Hung and Mr. Doan Huy Chuong, who, since 2010, have been serving nine and seven year prison terms respectively for advocating for independent union rights. President Obama must demand that Vietnam release these political prisoners now and pay them compensation as was demanded by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in February 2013. One more thing: Demand that the police return the trade unionists’ phones without planting tracking malware or spyware on them.
Before President Obama signs the TPP, he must convince American lawmakers and the American people that we can trust new trade partners. In his May speech at Nike’s campus, the President gushed about Nike and Vietnam as models for the positive benefits of the TPP - yet in the case of the 2,000 workers mentioned above, Nike did not stop factory managers from forcing workers to sign voluntary resignation papers so that they could turn around and hire new workers for cheaper wages; and the Vietnamese regime has made no arrests nor disciplined any of the police officers who conducted themselves like thugs when taking Ms. Do and Mr. Truong into custody. If the President continues to pedal the rhetoric and ignore outrageous human rights violations, then every lawmaker in Washington should give pause to allowing the TPP deal to go through.