The UN Human Rights Committee urged Communist Vietnam...

The UN Human Rights Committee urged Communist Vietnam to curb the number of crimes subject to the death penalty, end arbitrary detention and lift restrictions on freedom of expression.
Ending a three-week review of signatory states to treaties on social and political rights, the Geneva-based committee said Vietnam had relaxed some of the restraints which in the past had raised "serious questions of gross violations of rights".
Nevertheless, the United Nations body said it had a number of concerns, including whether the Vietnamese constitution, with its monopoly power for the Communist Party, was even compatible with the 1976 covenants on political, economic, social and cultural rights which Vietnam had signed.
The treaties guarantee freedoms of expression and religion and ban abuses such as arbitrary arrest.On specific issues, the committee said it was worried by the number of crimes that could carry the death penalty and by the continued use of administrative detention, under which police can hold those suspected of breaking national security laws for up to two years without trial.
It urged the Vietnamese government to strengthen the judiciary, guarantee its independence and put an end "to direct and indirect restrictions on freedom of expression".
Vietnamese rights groups welcomed the committee's findings, saying that although they were couched in diplomatic language, they sent a strong message to Hanoi.
"Their aim is to maintain a dialogue (with Vietnam), so it is diplomatic," said Penelope Faulkner, vice president of the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights.
"But it is a strong condemnation of Vietnam," she told Reuters.
However, she added that the committee should have been more outspoken on religious freedom because nearly all the monks leading the banned Unified Buddhist Church - Vietnam's dominant religion - were under house arrest.
The committee asked Vietnam, which is supposed under the terms of the covenants to provide regular reports, to inform it of the number of people belonging to religious communities.