The International Federation for Human Rights, and its member organization, the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR), filed a complaint to the European Commission's trade department on February 4.

The complaint alleges that Vietnam's ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders working on the sustainable development clauses of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) violates the deal.

"It is high time the EU held Vietnam accountable for these gross violations of the trade agreement. Vietnamese defenders must feel safe and free to demand accountability and stand up for the rights of their communities," VCHR president Penelope Faulkner said in a statement.

Since the 1990s, the EU has often included human rights clauses in framework agreements when negotiating free trade deals with other countries, although some campaigners say that Brussels has shown little appetite to enforce its terms.

This has led some to question the rationale of using trade to drive social change.

Ben Swanton, co-director of Project88, a human rights group, told DW that "it makes no sense for the EU to include human rights conditions in free trade agreements if they are not serious about enforcing those conditions."

Before the European Parliament ratified the EVFTA in 2020, Vietnamese campaigners and NGOs lobbied Brussels to make the human rights provisions binding and to include suspension clauses for grave human rights violations.

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In 2019, journalist Pham Chi Dung was arrested just two days after publicly calling on the European Parliament to........

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