WASHINGTON - Washington is pushing Vietnam to take tangible steps to boost human rights in the coming weeks, including freeing political prisoners, as it eyes joining an emerging Pacific trade pact.
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski during a press conference on the annual Human Rights Dialog with the Government of Vietnam, in Hanoi on May 11, 2015.
"It is obviously a very critical moment in the relationship and human rights is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve," Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski said Friday.
Malinowski has just returned from a weeklong visit to the Southeast Asian nation during which he met with top Vietnamese leaders as well as civil society actors, including religious minority community leaders.
Some "fragile progress" has been made in boosting human rights in the communist-run country in the past year, but "we've got absolutely no illusions about the nature of the challenge," he stressed.
"Vietnam is still a one-party state and still a country that criminalizes various forms of dissent," he told a few reporters on a conference call.
But the senior official argued that the allure of being included in an emerging free-trade deal that would cover 40 percent of the global economy was "the most important leverage we have to encourage Vietnam to move in the direction" of greater openness.
The ambitious 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is still under negotiation.
US lawmakers are pushing a draft bill through Congress to ensure that progress is made on sensitive issues such as rights, and that they do not get "bargained away" in the trade talks.
"There is clearly a very profound debate underway in Vietnamese society and in the Vietnamese government about the country's trajectory, a debate about whether and how to build a more open and less rigid political system," Malinowksi said.
"I left the Vietnamese government with a very clear message, that what they do on these issues, particularly in the next few weeks, will have a very significant impact on the prospects for TPP."
Being in the spotlight of the trade deal in the past year has already seen Vietnamese authorities show "greater restraint" about the arrest and persecution of dissidents, Malinowski said.
So far this year, there have been no convictions for political dissent, compared with 61 in 2013 and 29 last year.
Washington is also pushing for the release of about 100 remaining prisoners of conscience, down from 160 in 2013.
But Malinowski said there were still disturbing cases of dissidents being threatened with arrest or beaten, adding that he had share with Vietnamese officials Washington's "urgent concern that there not be steps backward."
Joining the TPP would also require Vietnam to allow the establishment of free trade unions and collective bargaining -- something that is currently prohibited.
On Thursday, the US Senate advanced contentious legislation would allow President Barack Obama to fast track the TPP pact, but the bill on so-called "trade promotion authority" still has to make it through the House.