mobile phone communications of believers and political dissidents with equipment from British and Israeli companies.
"In May 2006 the Vietnam Army bought mobile telephone monitoring equipment worth half a million US dollars. The spy systems are called P-GSM systems and produced by the English company Silver Bullet," said the US-based Montagnard Foundation Incorporated (MFI).
"The sale was brokered by two Israeli companies Elta Electronics Industries (a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries) and Aikap. It is noted that in 2002 the Vietnamese Ministry of Police bought a similar mobile phone surveillance system manufactured by a US-based company called Verint Systems," MFI claimed.
The companies were not immediately available for comment.
VIETNAM’S CENTRAL HIGHLANDS
MFI, which has close contacts with Montagnard Degar Christians in especially Vietnam’s Central Highlands, warned "these monitoring systems are being used by the Vietnamese military and police to spy on conversations of Vietnamese citizens who speak to each other inside Vietnam and outside of the country."
The Vietnamese military "then arrests, tortures and sometimes even kills those arrested for merely speaking to people outside of the country," it added
Wireless communications, including mobile phones, are often the only way for people in especially isolated regions in the Central Highlands to communicate with the outside world.
TORTURED AND IMPRISONED
MFI said that especially Christians as well as Buddhists and other dissidents who speak out on about human rights abuses “find themselves arrested, tortured and imprisoned." It added that currently over 350 Montagnard Degar Christians are in Vietnamese prisons for being involved in the Christian House Church movement of for speaking out against human rights abuses or fleeing to Cambodia.
The United States State Department has listed Vietnam on its Country of Particular Concern (CPC) Watch list of nations it says are among the most serious violators of religious freedom. MFI said is has urged governments "who value freedom to ensure their countries do not sell products in Vietnam used to repress human rights, that may even result in the deaths of innocent people."
The Vietnamese government is among "the most repressive in Asia and has for decades officially persecuted Montagnard Degar Christians," the group claimed. The Communist Vietnamese authorities have strongly denied human rights abuses. They have accused MFI and other organizations of spreading "Western propaganda" aimed at undermining Vietnam’s society and values. (With reports from Vietnam).
