Vietnam’s arrest of a reform-minded labor official could hurt efforts to improve trade terms with the United States

BANGKOK – A senior Vietnamese official at the country’s labor ministry has been arrested for “intentionally disclosing state secrets,” police said Thursday. Analysts said a development could harm Vietnam’s efforts to secure more favorable trade conditions for exports to the United States.

There were no further details about the arrest of lawyer Nguyen Van Binh beyond the announcement on the website of police in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. However, human rights activists claim he was arrested because he supported the idea of ​​independent trade unions, which was banned under the communist government.

They also say it is a sign of ongoing repression, which has so far been aimed primarily at bloggers, environmentalists and civil society groups.

According to the law, Binh, who headed the legal department in the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, faces between two and 15 years in prison for disclosing state secrets in this authoritarian one-party state.

A brief profile of Binh on an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development website last year said the 51-year-old lawyer also worked for the United Nations’ International Labor Organization.

His arrest was first reported earlier this week by The 88 Project, a small multinational organization that monitors and promotes human rights and civil liberties in Vietnam. It described Binh as a reformer who supported independent unions.

“Binh’s arrest comes amid a new wave of repression in Vietnam,” the group said in its report dated Monday. It said Binh’s arrest was “the first arrest of a government reformer in recent years.”

The 88 Project in February released a secret directive from Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party on national security for 2023 that ordered a crackdown on labor groups, civil society and foreign organizations seen as a threat to national security.

Binh led efforts to ratify the United Nations International Labor Organization Convention 87, which if passed would guarantee workers the right to form independent unions without prior approval, the group said.

The issue of labor reform is important for Vietnam for economic reasons.

When President Biden visited Vietnam last September, Washington and Hanoi elevated their relationship to the highest diplomatic level of a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” Analysts said it reflected the US desire to have Vietnam as an ally against rival superpower China.

However, Vietnam remains on a list of 12 countries, including China and Russia, that the US classifies as non-market economies that are essentially state-controlled.

Around the same time as Biden’s visit, Vietnam asked the U.S. Commerce Department to decide whether Vietnam could officially be classified as a market economy, which could potentially lower tariffs on its exports to the U.S., its largest market.

The Commerce Department held a public hearing on the upgrade on Wednesday and is expected to complete the review in July. Although the determination should be based on purely economic criteria, an open category allows aspects such as labor rights to be taken into account, which could speak against a change to market economy status.

Vietnam maintains that its labor laws are in line with international standards, including setting wages through free negotiations between workers and employers.

The US State Department and human rights groups say this is not the case.

“It is patently false to suggest that Vietnamese workers can organize unions or that their wages are the result of free negotiations between workers and management,” John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said on Wednesday.

“In Vietnam, there is not a single independent trade union and there is no functioning legal framework for the establishment of trade unions or for workers to enforce labor rights,” he added.

Improved trade status is also symbolically important for the Vietnamese government, said Murray Hiebert, senior fellow in the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Vietnam officials find Washington’s continued classification of Vietnam as a non-market economy “an insult and confusion given how important Vietnam is to the U.S. as a trade and investment partner,” Hiebert said.

“Hanoi also finds it offensive to be included in a group of 12 countries that includes China, Russia and countries formerly affiliated with the Soviet Union,” Hiebert said in an email to The Associated Press.

The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment.