The European Union has spoken out against Vietnam’s arrest of human rights and labor campaigners, and environmental experts, telling a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council that Hanoi should free people it has locked up for exercising their basic rights. The comments came at the 58th session of the council, known as the UNHRC, in Geneva on Monday.
“We remain deeply concerned over the arrests of human rights defenders as well as labour rights, climate and environmental experts in Vietnam, which has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, assembly and association,” said Ambassador Lotte Knudsen, the head of the European Union delegation to the U.N.