09/06/2020
Thank you to everyone who has followed this page since it started and who is advocating for Chau Van Kham on social media and in letters to their MPs.
I wanted to give some insight into why this is so important because it’s easy to feel helpless in these situations and wonder what these measures are actually achieving.
The concept of “making noise” is not to directly prompt the Vietnamese government to do things differently, but to get the Australian government to advocate more strongly so they push the Vietnamese government harder.
Although we’d like to believe that governments do the right thing and advocate as strongly and forcefully as they can in situations of injustice, the fact is that they don’t. Kham’s case in particular is, frankly, a shocking abandonment of an Australian citizen. He has been publically ignored and we know that limited, if any, measures have been taken to secure his safety, let alone his release, by virtue of the fact that there was no access or medication for months and he was moved without prior information to the Australian government.
There are a myriad of reasons why governments don’t advocate as strongly as they should, both generally and specifically in each case. But the crucial aspect is that because we are a democracy, governments care about what their population thinks and wants. The more noise that is made the more they have to answer uncomfortable questions, the more the media holds them to account, and the more they have to worry about something becoming an election issue. Further, people in government are also human. The more noise around an issue the more they are simply reminded of it where they might otherwise put it on the backburner.
This is an excellent article on the distinctions in cases that is worth reading for more insight: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-07/why-do-some-australian-political-prisoners-get-more-attention/11769644
In Kham’s case, the Australian government clearly needs to be pushed on this issue. We also know that when foreign governments have properly advocated with Vietnam, it has made a difference and resulted in the release of prisoners.
One tweet, one FB Like, one letter, does not seem like much. But if 10,000 people tweet, Like and write then it is suddenly significant. This also has the capacity to create momentum and attract media and more high profile attention. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get any response to any of what you do - the important thing is that it is getting the word out there and increasing awareness. Everything you do IS making a difference even when you don’t know it.
In a single week in January, two Australian men were swiftly arrested in Asia. Both faced trumped-up charges of threatening national security in communist regimes. But they have received very different responses from the Australian Government.
