Vietnam lawyer sues premier over law barring group complaints

Oct 26, 2010, 6:30 GMT

Hanoi - A Vietnamese lawyer said Tuesday that he had sued the country's prime minister over a decree that bars people from lodging complaints as a group.

Cu Huy Ha Vu, a prominent gadfly who last year sued the government over environmental issues, said a 2006 decree requiring petitions and complaints to be filed only by individuals violates Vietnam's constitution.

'I decided to take legal proceedings against Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung because he continues to violate the constitution and the law,' Vu said. He said he had filed the suit at the weekend.

Dung issued the decree months after several hundred activists had signed an independent political petition known as the 8406 Manifesto, which advocated democratic reform in the one-party, Communist state.

In practice, groups of Vietnamese citizens have continued to lodge complaints over land disputes and other non-political matters, and the decree has been largely ignored.

Vu said the decree violates an article of the constitution that stipulates 'citizens have the right to gather, form groups and protest in conformity with the law.'

In 2009, Vu sued Dung for approving Chinese-run bauxite-mining projects in Vietnam's Central Highlands. He said the projects broke laws on environmental protection, national security and cultural heritage.

The suit was thrown out by the courts, which said they did not have authority to try the prime minister.

While other activists opposed to the bauxite mines have faced police harassment or arrest, Vu has not.

Vu's father, Cu Huy Can, was a widely read poet, a confidant of national leader Ho Chi Minh and the first agriculture minister of independent Vietnam. An uncle, Xuan Dieu, was one of the most famous poets in Vietnamese literature.

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