President Obama said he complained to the Vietnamese government about their decision to prevent several human rights activists from meeting with him during his visit to the communist country earlier this week.
“I was very blunt with the Vietnamese government,” he told reporters Thursday. “There is so much good going on in that country, what I indicated to them is these kinds of heavy-handed actions end up being counterproductive.”
“The folks we invited, including those who were there, are people who are prepared to have a constructive conversation with the government about how to advance peace and prosperity and economic development and environmental security,” he said.
Instead of trying to limit their protests, Obama said he told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang that he should “harness that talent.”
“Let them loose to create start-ups and to solve problems and engage them,” he said.
It’s the same message Obama said he told Cuban President Raul Castro during his visit to Havana in March.
“The one thing I’m absolutely convinced of – by us engaging in a meeting with civil society activities, it helps move the ball, it moves the needle,” he said.
Obama met in Vietnam with six human rights activists, including advocates for gays and lesbians and the disabled that the Vietnamese government allowed to attend. But the several others the White House had invited to the meeting were either barred from attending or discouraged in such a way they felt uncomfortable participating, U.S. officials said.
The president cited his administration’s role in helping Burma transition to a democratic society as the beginning of a transformation on human rights there as well. But there are still instances in which the Burmese government abuses the human rights of its dissidents, he said.
While in Cuba, Obama recalled, one of the dissidents he met with still had “cuts on his wrists from handcuffs” because the government had just detained him the day before the meeting.
But, he argued, by “us meeting with them” and putting a “spotlight on their stories,” progress is being made.
The biggest lesson of his presidency when it comes to human rights, he said, is that engaging with countries that have human rights problems is more effective than “standing back and scolding.”
“We need to lift up the actions of these civil society leaders to provide them a little more space, and that space slowly grows – and it ends up being a process … it’s not a process that ends up being in a straight line,” he said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who spent five years in captivity in Vietnam during the war but has since become a leading advocate for normalized ties with the communist country, criticized the Vietnamese government’s decision to prevent civil society leaders from meeting with Obama during his visit to Hanoi.
McCain said Wednesday he was “deeply disappointed,” and characterized the Vietnamese actions that prevented their participation in the meeting as an “insult” to Obama.
“Those of us who have advocated for closer U.S. relations with Vietnam must take pause in light of this insult to our president,” McCain said in a statement. “The opportunity for a stronger relationship between the United States and Vietnam depends on the Vietnamese government’s progress toward respecting the human rights of the Vietnamese people.”
“This petty act of repression has undermined that progress,” he added.
