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February 8, 2012
Today BPSOS joins SBTN in launching a 30-day petition drive on behalf of hundreds of human rights champions currently detained or imprisoned in Vietnam. With the recent changes in Burma, the Vietnamese government has emerged as the worst violator of human rights in Southeast Asia.
The online petition drive makes use of the White House's "We The People" website to call on the Obama Administration not to expand trade with Vietnam at the expense of human rights. The US Trade Representative, which reports directly to the President, is considering Vietnam's efforts to expand trade with the US through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and gain preferential tariffs on goods exported to the US through the Generalized System of Preferences. The petition calls on President Obama to not decouple trade from human rights and seek the release of all detained and imprisoned champions of human rights as part of the trade negotiation with communist Vietnam.
"With this petition drive, we would like to demonstrate our community's ability for self-mobilization around a common cause," said Truc Ho, President of SBTN.
As of 8pm, the petition drive has already collected over 7,000 signatories and is expected to reach 8,000 by midnight. Its goal is to reach 25,000 sign-on petitioners in 30 days for the Administration to issue an official response. "This is a great occasion for all sectors in the Vietnamese American community to work together, and we are doing exactly that," added Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang, Executive Director of BPSOS.
SBTN, BPSOS and many Vietnamese-American community organizations has set up stations in multiple cities across the country to assist community members faced with difficulties using the internet. Hundreds of bilingual college students and young professionals have signed up to volunteer at these stations.
The petition drive has received strong support beyond the Vietnamese-American community - many American veterans of the Vietnam War and human rights advocates are mobilizing their circles of friends through social media.
All American citizens and residents who care about human rights are asked to lend a hand and sign the online petition. [A petitioner needs to first open an account at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions, then sign the petition at: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/stop-expanding-trade-vietnam-expense-human-rights/53PQRDZH.] SBTN is the most popular Vietnamese-language television programming available on DIRECTV, with 400,000 subscribers. For many Vietnamese-Americans with limited English proficiency, SBTN is their primary window to the world of information and news. BPSOS is the largest Vietnamese-American non-profit with offices in eleven locations across the US. Through local partners, the organization also operates in Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. BPSOS' network of bilingual mass media and social media reaches one in every four Vietnamese-American households.
"By joining forces, SBTN and BPSOS aim to politically empower the Vietnamese-American community overall and to engage Vietnamese-Americans in the public debate on domestic issues and our government's Vietnam-related foreign policies," Dr. Thang explained.