My parents and I were exposed to the outside news when I was a kid. We often listened to BBC Vietnamese Service. Xuan Hong anchor is the only name that I can remember. At that time in Vietnam, you might get into trouble just listening to foreign radio, especially Western media. When I was in Vietnam, I was aware of how much freedom Vietnamese people had. After I migrated to the US, I was surprised that normal citizens can criticize all government officials when they don’t agree with policies or just don’t like them. After I started to learn English by watching many TV programs from around the world, I see freedom in Vietnam is not worse than I thought.
When you talk about freedom in any country, you have to consider: freedom of religion, gender equality, freedom of speech, etc. Freedom of religion and gender equality in Vietnam can compare to Western standards, freedom of speech in Vietnam is restricted in some topics such as ruling party, and high-level officials. Why does Vietnam receive a lot of critics from many human rights watch organizations? Because Western media are hypocritical and biased too. There are many nations have worse records of human rights violations, but they only receive a few criticisms from the UN human rights organizations.
Vietnam is a secular country, so freedom of religion is not a problem. There are many countries where freedom of religion may take more than 100 years to achieve. According to Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the foundational documents of the U.N., “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.”. Based on the UN’s interpretation, Vietnamese people do have freedom of religion. The UN reported that Among all regions, Middle East-North Africa has the highest government and social restrictions on religion, while the Americas are the least restrictive region on both measures. Among the world’s 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India stand out as having the most restrictions when both measures are taken into account. You can see India, Indonesia, and Pakistan are not considered freedom of religion in UN reports.
When you look at the map above, you can see the countries that are colored green mean citizens living in those countries can’t change their religion. The punishment for converting religion ranges from prison to capital punishment. Even Malaysia only granted freedom of religion to non-Muslims.
Vietnam has gender equality compared with the US and many Western countries. You don’t see any restrictions on female education or job opportunities. Bisexuality is not a crime in Vietnam, but many people often make fun of them. Freedom of speech in Vietnam may take many years compared to other Western countries. I hope anyone who just expresses their opinions doesn’t get persecuted in Vietnam and other countries. When I visited Vietnam, I was afraid to talk about some topics.
My friends in Vietnam often discussed with me how much freedom Vietnam has. I told them that Vietnamese people have a lot of freedom than many countries. Even freedom in Vietnam can’t compare to the US and many European countries, but over a billion people on this planet even don’t have freedom of religion. I know that most of my friends only know Vietnamese so their information has limited. I can’t believe in the twenty-first century, humans landed on Moon a long time ago, but many countries still use religion to control people.