From: bgirard@selkirk.sfu.ca (Bruce Girard)
Subject: Radio Irina - Vietnam
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 19:07:40 GMT

bg
 
 
/* Written 12:17 pm  Nov  5, 1992 by hrcoord@igc.apc.org in igc:media.issues */
/* ---------- "Viet: Doesn't Like Human Rights Cri" ---------- */
From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: Viet: Doesn't Like Human Rights Criticism
 
>From @pucc.Princeton.EDU:SEASIA-L@MSU.BITNET Thu Nov  5 10:09:42
1992
 
Forward from soc.culture.vietnamese
--------------------------------------
 
Radio Irina ( Voice of Freedom from Moscow )
 
FREEDOM OF THE AIR
 
        Hanoi is annoyed at having its human right criticised by a
        private Moscow-based radio station.
 
By Jeff Lilley in Moscow
------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
        Just as Russo-Vietnamese relations seemed to be on the
mend, a private Moscow radio station's broadcasts into Vietnam
have put the two countries at odds. Since 20 July, Radio Irina
from Moscow has been preaching the virtues of democracy and giving
voice to Vietnamese dissidents and their disenchanted countrymen
around the world.
 
        Broadcast nightly from a small studio in central Moscow,
Radio Irina has provoked strong protests from the Vietnamese
Government. Says Zuong Dac Zung ( ? BL), press attache at the
Vietnamese Embassy in Moscow : " Such a station perverts the truth
and constitutes interference in the internal affairs of our
country.  We want them to close down the radio station so that it
doesn't damaged relations."
 
        The station's advocay of human rights has galled Hanoi,
which is intent on preventing political reform from encroaching
upon its drive to liberalise the Vietnamese economy.  Hanoi is
particullar worried that Radio Irina may stir up opposition to the
regime among thousands of Vietnamese living outside the country.
But the Russian Foreign Minister feels powerless to intervene.  A
Russian law on press rights, passed last December, legalised the
creation of independent radio stations.  Because the law was
drafted in response to the rapidly changing situation in Russia,
its provisions contain no mention of broadcast to other
countries.
 
        "The legislators couldn't predict such situations, but
according to the law, what isn't prohibited is permitted," says
Vadim Serafimov, senior counsellar on the Vietnam desk at the
Foreign Ministry.  "We are trying to begin to live by the rule of
law.  Two years ago, we could have forbidden it.  Now. we can't do
anything."
 
        The one-hour progamme is broadcast by Irina Ziessman, a
37-year-old mother of three who previously worked in Vietnam
department at Radio Moscow, a government mouthpiece.  In
near-perfect Vietnamese, Ziessman reads articles from
Vietnamese-language newspapers in Europe and the US and airs
underground publications smuggled out of Vietnam.  " My goal is to
make Vietnam a democratic society," she says.
 
        Before founding her own station, Ziessman had built up
quite a following among Vietnamese in Soviet Union and in Vietnam
with her efforts to improve the employment conditions of
Vietnamese workers in the Soviet Union.  "The Vietnamese loved me
then," she says with a smile.  In May 1990 she began helping
Amnesty International's Vietnam representative, Nguyen Dan Que, in
his efforts to promote human rights in Vietnam.  Que's trial in
November 1991 - at which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison
for trying to overthrow the Vietnamese Government - inspired
Ziessman to go ahead with her human rights campaign from Moscow.
But she found herself hamstrung by Radio Moscow's adherence to
Russian Government policy.
 
        The new press law enabled Ziessman to break free from
government control.  She registered the radio station in May and
purchased air time on a Siberian transmitter from the Ministry of
Communications, which hold a monopoly on transmitters in Russia.
Several weeks later, Ziessman received financial help from
US-based Vietnamese groups to supplement the limited funds she had
raised from local Moscow newspapers and the Russian Orthodox
Church.  The day before the first broadcast, she resigned her
position at Radio Moscow.
 
        The Radia Irina affair has embarrassed the Foreign
Ministry.  The ministry's hope is that the controversy over the
broadcasts will not derail Russo-Vietnamese relations which are
emerging from a period of inactivity folowwing the tumultuous
changes in the former Soviet Union.  During the disruption in
relations, trade plummeted, oil shipments to Vietnam dried up and
Soviet arms sales were reduced to US$200 million, one sixth of
their 1989 level.  In July, the two governments announced the
signing of a trade and economic protocol calling for US$800
million in bilateral trade this year, a figure which would restore
trade to 70% of the 1990 level.
 
        But with Hanoi now showing little flexibility and the
Russian Foreign Ministry reluctant to pressure the private radio
station, there seems to be nothing to do but wait.  "It's a new
situation that demands time for psychological adaption to let
people understand that this is a reality," says Serafimov. " Time
is the best doctor."
 

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