Obama reaches out to people a day after Vietnam arms deal
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — After knocking down one of the last vestiges of Cold War antagonism with a former war enemy, President Barack Obama on Tuesday took his push for closer ties directly to the Vietnamese people, meeting with activists and entrepreneurs. Amid the geopolitical statecraft, he faces calls to more strongly address what’s seen as an abysmal human rights record.
Obama spoke with 10 activists Tuesday, including advocates for the disabled, sexual minorities, a pastor and advocates for freedom of speech, press and the Internet, but he said that several others were prevented from coming.
“Vietnam has made remarkable strides in many ways,” Obama said, but “there are still areas of significant concern.”
He was to give a speech aimed at the people of Vietnam a day after announcing the lifting of a five-decade-old arms sales embargo that’s meant to help forge a new economic and security relationship with this young, fast-growing Southeast Asian nation.
Obama must balance a desire for a stronger relationship with efforts to hold its communist leadership to account over what activists say is the widespread abuse of dissidents.
From Hanoi, Obama was to fly Tuesday to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. He planned a visit to the Jade Pagoda, considered one of the most beautiful pagodas in southern Vietnam and a repository of religious documents that includes more than 300 statues and other relics.
Shifting from the historical to the modern, Obama also planned to visit the Dreamplex business complex in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, a space for startup entrepreneurs that fits with Obama’s message about the potential benefits of closer ties to Vietnam’s growing economy and its burgeoning middle class.
Obama also planned to meet with entrepreneurs, letting him talk up the benefits of what he says will be enhanced trade under a 12-nation trans-Pacific trade deal that is stalled in Congress and opposed by the leading U.S. presidential candidates.
During a Monday news conference with Vietnam’s president, Obama traced the arc of the U.S.-Vietnamese relationship through cooperation, conflict, “painful separation” and a long reconciliation. “If you consider where we have been and where we are now, the transformation in the relations between our two countries is remarkable,” Obama said.
President Tran Dai Quang said later at a lavish state luncheon that he was grateful for the American people’s efforts to put an end to “an unhappy chapter in the two countries’ history,” referring to the 1965-1975 U.S. war with Vietnam’s communists, who now run the country.
The conflict killed 57,000 American military personnel and as many as 2 million Vietnamese military and civilians.
Quang added that “the wounds of the war have not been fully healed in both countries.” Still, Quang said, both sides are determined to have a more cooperative relationship.
That mindset was evident in the friendly crowds that lined the streets as Obama’s motorcade zigzagged around Hanoi. When Obama emerged from a tiny Vietnamese restaurant after a $6 dinner with celebrity former chef Anthony Bourdain, he shook hands with members of the squealing crowd and waved as if reluctant to get back in the limousine.
Obama’s speech on Tuesday will stress the importance of having a “constructive dialogue,” even when the two nations disagree, including on human rights, a White House official said.
That is unlikely to mollify activists, who said the president had given up his best leverage for pressing Vietnam to improve its rights record by lifting the arms embargo.
Duy Hoang, U.S.-based spokesman for Viet Tan, a pro-democracy party that is banned inside Vietnam, said that until Vietnam makes progress on human rights, the U.S. should not sell it military gear that could be used against the population.
Vietnam holds about 100 political prisoners and there have been more detentions this year, some in the past week. Hanoi says that only lawbreakers are punished.
Obama said there had been “modest progress on some of the areas that we’ve identified as a concern.”
IDOMENI, Greece (AP) — It grew to the size of a small town, becoming a symbol of Europe’s closed border policy for migrants and refugees. On Tuesday, Greek authorities began to dismantle it.
Starting at dawn, police moved more than 2,000 people out of Idomeni, the sprawling makeshift camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, and sent in bulldozers to begin erasing the tent city.
The move definitively dashed the dreams of the thousands who had camped there for months in the hope of eventually being able to reach the continent’s wealthy heartland.
The refugees — many from Syria and Iraq — had stubbornly resisted government efforts to leave the site voluntarily, braving torrential rainfall and winter weather.
On Tuesday, they were placed on buses and taken to newly built shelters set up by the army and local authorities as the government promised to clear the site of the remaining 6,500 people over the next week.
More than 700 police officers were deployed in the operation. Authorities posted helicopter footage of the evacuation on the Internet but journalists were banned from approaching the site.
Emad Hawary, a 50-year-old Syrian, fled on foot with his wife and two daughters to avoid being transported out.
“The police were everywhere and it was quite scary,” he said after seeking refuge at a nearby gas station. “We don’t want to go to a shelter. It’s just another field.”
Hawary said the family was still determined to reach northern Europe and their son who is already in Germany.
The prospects of that are dim, however.
At its peak, when Macedonia shut its border in March, the camp housed more than 14,000, but numbers have declined as people began accepting authorities’ offers of alternative places to stay.
Most were living in small tents pitched in fields and along railroad tracks, or in large marquee-style tents set up by aid agencies to help house people.
Greek authorities regularly sent in cleaning crews and provided portable toilets, but conditions were precarious at best, with heavy rain creating muddy ponds.
Recently the camp had begun taking on an image of semi-permanence, with refugees setting up small makeshift shops selling everything from cooking utensils to falafel and bread.
In Geneva, UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said the evacuation appeared to be taking place “calmly,” and the U.N. refugee agency was sending in more staffers.
“As long as the movement of people from Idomeni is ... voluntary in nature (and) we’re not seeing use of force, then we don’t have particular concerns about that,” he said.
“It often does help to move people into more organized sites, when they’re willing to move to those places,” he added.
The government opted for tougher action after creating more shelter space in recent weeks at former army facilities and disused industrial sites.
It also wants to reopen the country’s main freight rail line to the Balkans, which runs through the camp and has been closed for two months.
“The government will not use violent means. It’s a very large operation and everything must be kept safe,” Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman on immigration, told private Real FM radio.
More than 54,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in financially struggling Greece since countries further north shut their land borders to a massive flow of people escaping war and poverty at home.
Nearly a million people have passed through Greece, the vast majority arriving on islands from the nearby Turkish coast.
In March, the European Union reached an agreement with Turkey meant to stem the flow and reduce the number of people undertaking the perilous sea crossing to Greece, where many have died when their overcrowded, unseaworthy boats sank.
Under the deal, anyone who arrives clandestinely on Greek islands from the Turkish coast after March 18 faces deportation to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.
But few want to request asylum in the country, which has been struggling with a deep, six-year financial crisis that has left unemployment hovering at around 24 percent.
Melanie Ward of the of the New York-based humanitarian agency the International Rescue Committee said Tuesday’s police action was a result of European Union reluctance to follow through with commitments to relocate refugees from Greece to other member states.
“What is happening signals the start of the establishment of medium- to long-term camps on European soil,” she said.
“Why, two months after the EU-Turkey deal, has so little progress been made on the asylum and relocation process?” she added.