“Will President Obama Prioritize the Release of Prisoners of Conscience in Vietnam?” is the title of a congressional hearing to highlight the victims and human rights advocates fighting for basic freedoms in Vietnam including labor, press and political rights from the Vietnamese government at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill planned for Tuesday by Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), chair of the House panel that oversees global human rights.

    Nguyen Van Dai, a human rights lawyer who was arrested by the Vietnamese Government in December 2015, will be a main focus of the hearing. He was detained as he was preparing to meet with representatives of the European Union who were in Hanoi for talks with Vietnamese officials about human rights and remains imprisoned.

    Vietnam is expected to be among the big winners of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, where its garment and shoe industries would greatly benefit from the elimination of U.S. and other major importing nations’ tariffs.

    Amid rapidly expanding U.S.-Vietnamese trade, the Obama administration’s handling of human rights will come under scrutiny at the hearing.
 
           Who:   Chairman Chris Smith, (NJ-04) Senior Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chair of its Subcommittee on Global Human Rights; other members of the committee, and witness:

• Vu Minh Khanh, (Wife of Vietnamese Prisoner of Conscience Nguyen Van Dai)

  What:   House hearing about human rights abuses by Vietnamese authorities

  Where:  2172 Rayburn Building (first floor).

  When:   Tues., May 10, 2016 @ 4 p.m.

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