Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today in support of my resolution, House Resolution 672, which calls on the Government of Vietnam to release imprisoned bloggers and to respect Internet freedom.

I would like to thank, first and foremost, Chairman Berman and the committee staff for allowing us to bring this to the floor; and in particular, it's important right now with respect to what the Vietnamese Government is doing.

Since I came to the Congress, I have been a strong advocate for human rights in Vietnam. As a co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on Vietnam, my fellow caucus members and I have focused on urging the Government of Vietnam to respect individual rights, in particular, those of religion and of speech and expression.

We have also worked with multiple U.S. administrations to make human rights an important part of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship. Unfortunately, instead of improving, the human rights conditions in Vietnam continue to deteriorate, and I have been concerned that the United States has not yet taken a fervent stand against the Government of Vietnam's blatant disregard for human rights.

I have been on this floor a number of times, many times, many of you know that, to call attention in particular to the bloggers and to the democracy activists in Vietnam, the ones who have been detained and imprisoned simply for advocating for democracy.

The Internet has become a crucial tool for the citizens of Vietnam to be able to exercise their freedom of expression and association. It has become a medium to share information freely, to promote social and economic development, and of course to fight for democracy. However, in recent months, the Government of Vietnam has taken what I would call unlawful steps to tighten its control over the Internet.

In October of 2008, the Government of Vietnam created the Administration Agency for Radio, Television and Electronics Information and issued Circular 07 in December 2008 to restrict Internet freedom, to censor private blogs, and to compel information technology companies to cooperate with them to monitor personal information on users. Imagine, if we had that going on here in the United States, how unacceptable that would be.

In response, I, along with the Vietnam Caucus members, sent letters to Internet service providers like Google and Yahoo, et cetera, and urged them to continue advocating for the freedoms of speech and expression on the Internet in Vietnam; and then I introduced this resolution to raise the awareness of the lack of Internet freedom in Vietnam.

House Resolution 672 urges the Vietnamese Government to support the right of its citizens to access Web sites of their choosing and to repeal statutes like Circular 07 and Article 88, which restrict Internet use in Vietnam.

The consideration of this resolution comes at a perfect time. The Government of Vietnam has arrested bloggers Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, Bui Thanh Hieu, Pham Doan Trang, and many other bloggers. Some of these bloggers, like Quynh, have been released; however, there was a condition. In exchange for their freedom, they had to say that they would not blog about democracy or new political parties or freedoms of expression and human rights.

Just recently, nine dissidents were convicted by the Vietnamese Government for publishing articles on the Internet which was basically just practicing their rights of freedom of speech and expression. By the way, this is all about democracy. That's what these blogs are about.

The situation took a turn for the worse 2 weeks ago when Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was forcibly denied entry to the courthouse to attend the trial of nine democracy activists and was instead harassed by the Vietnamese police. The following night, I received a phone call that one of the democracy activists, Do Ba Tan, and his wife, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, were beaten in front of their 13-year-old daughter and imprisoned by the Vietnamese Government and police. When I heard about it, I immediately called the U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Vietnam, Virginia Palmer, and urged her to take action on this matter. Our U.S. Embassy in Vietnam responded by making inquiries about the 13-year-old daughter to make sure that she was being taken care of.

These actions are not the actions of a country that respects fundamental values and principles of human rights and democracy. A country that uses violence against its own citizens because they decide to exercise their fundamental freedoms does not deserve to be a member of the World Trade Organization, nor do they have the right to be acting as the President of the United Nations Security Council, a position that Vietnam currently holds.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, and yet they continue to detain and imprison their own citizens for using the Internet to promote democracy and human rights.

How can a country that blatantly disregards a U.N. declaration be allowed to act as the President of the Security Council? I believe that we, the United States, must take a stand against Vietnam's human rights violations. We are a beacon of freedom, of democracy, and it is our responsibility to speak out on behalf of those who have no voice.