US President Barack Obama told the Vietnamese government on Tuesday that upholding basic human rights poses no risk to the communist country’s future.
Advertisement
Asked about the move, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that “as a neighboring country, we would be happy to see Vietnam develop normal and friendly cooperative relationships with all other countries, including the United States”.
“They have plenty of human rights violations to account for, and I don’t feel it’s really appropriate to provide arms to them until we can see they’re more in line with our … way of human rights”, said Air Force veteran Jesse Hawk of Marietta, Georgia, who served in Vietnam from 1971 to 1973. He praised those Vietnamese who were “willing to make their voices heard”.
President Barack Obama’s decision to lift the half-century-old arms embargo was seen Monday by many veterans as a logical outgrowth of efforts to normalize relations between the US and the southeast Asian nation that has become a major trading partner since the war ended in 1975.
Obama said the United States would help Hanoi with military equipment to boost the capacity of its coastguard and “enhance maritime capabilities”.
“Nothing that we did here or are doing here is focused on China”, Kerry told reporters, adding that removing the embargo was not unusual but rather reflective of a new normalcy in USA relations with Vietnam.
Activists, however, said the president had given up his best leverage for pressing Vietnam to improve its rights record by lifting the arms embargo.
China has claimed most of the South China Sea, including a large area off Vietnam’s coast that Vietnam has claimed as part of its exclusive economic zone.
Mai Khoi, a Vietnamese singer, was one of the people who met Obama and she posted a photo on her Facebook page showing several people attended the meeting.
As Obama has said, the US will extend a handshake when aggressors unclench their fists.
Since them, Vietnam had been arguing for an end to the arms embargo.
Obama is also expected to meet dissidents and push for greater human rights freedom in the region too.
The president hopes to strengthen those ties with a new trans-Pacific trade deal, though it’s controversial in the U.S.
The comments point to Beijing’s underlying concerns about closer ties between its chief regional rival and its southern neighbor, with which it is in dispute over ownership of islands in the South China Sea.
The World Bank estimates that Vietnam would be the biggest beneficiary of the trade pact, with its gross domestic product growing almost 10 percent additionally over a decade. Annual U.S-Vietnam trade has swelled from $450 million when ties were normalised to $45 billion a year ago, and Washington is a big buyer of Vietnam’s televisions, smartphones, clothing and seafood.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., one of the harshest critics of Obama’s foreign policy, says the outreach to Cuba and Iran demonstrates “the folly of the president’s rush to appease adversaries who don’t change their behavior”.
From Hanoi, Obama will fly to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.
Obama interviewed three entrepreneurs at a Ho Chi Minh City co-working space called Dreamplex that hosts budget tech start-ups with supported of angel investors and Silicon Valley funds.
“It has taken many years and required great effort”, Obama said.
Despite Obama’s anti-bullying rhetoric, in just the past 70 years USA imperialism has intervened in more than 35 “smaller” nations.
He added that the USA would “continue to speak out on behalf of human rights we believe are universal”.
Advertisement
“Today President Obama rewarded Vietnam even though its government has done little to earn it: It has not repealed any repressive laws, nor released any significant number of political prisoners, nor made any substantial pledges”, Sifton added.
