Allen Weiner, director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law at Stanford Law School, today filed an update concerning the petition initially submitted to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) in Geneva in July 2012 contesting the illegal arrest and ongoing detention of 16 Vietnamese social and political activists.

The update reports on the continuing failure of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to comply with the opinion rendered by the UNWGAD in August 2013, which found that the deprivation of liberty of these activists contravened Vietnam’s international legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Working Group called upon the Vietnam government to immediately release the detainees and provide them with adequate reparation.

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“In view of the U.N. Working Group’s opinion in this case, there can be no reasonable question about whether Vietnam’s detention of these social and political activists is permissible under international law. It is not, but is simply governmental repression against those seeking to exercise civil and political rights that are protected under international law,” said Allen Weiner, senior lecturer at Stanford Law School and counsel for the petitioners.

“The refusal of the Vietnamese government to release these petitioners, notwithstanding the clear decision of the U.N. Working Group, reflects a deep disregard for international law and raises profound questions about the role Vietnam wishes to play in the international community,” he noted. “Above all, it is a deep injustice to these activists, who seek only to engage in the kind of speech and political and social advocacy that we take for granted in a free society.”