OceanLotus: Extending Cyber Espionage Operations Through Fake Websites, Steven Adair, Thomas Lancaster, and Volexity Threat Research, Volexity, November 6, 2020: “Volexity has identified multiple new attack campaigns being launched by OceanLotus via multiple fake websites and Facebook pages that have been set up within the last year. In addition to targeting those within Vietnam, Volexity has seen renewed targeting of OceanLotus’s neighbors throughout Southeast Asia. These websites have been observed profiling users, redirecting to phishing pages, and being leveraged to distribute malware payloads for Windows and OSX.”

US: President Should Set a Human Rights Foreign Policy. Human Rights Watch, November 10, 2020: “As the United States grapples with systemic racism and other human rights violations domestically, it is particularly important for the president to ensure that US foreign policy helps to eliminate and does not contribute to discrimination around the world, and strengthens equality in law and practice. President-Elect Joe Biden can begin by clearly stating in a public address his commitment to a human rights foreign policy. When his administration takes office in January 2021, it should take immediate steps to carry out the following commitments, which will place the United States on the right path to making human rights a foreign policy priority.”

What Will a Biden Presidency Mean for U.S.-Vietnam Relations?, Bich T. Tran, Modern Diplomacy, November 9, 2020: “Biden makes it clear that ‘the United States does need to get tough with China…. The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors’. He promises to deepen partnerships to advance shared values in a region and uphold diplomacy as U.S. primary tool of foreign policy. For him, the answer to the China threat is ‘more friendships, more cooperation, more alliances’. Therefore, Biden will continue to strengthen U.S. partnership with Vietnam.”

Why Vietnam Isn’t Happy About a Biden Presidency, Michael Tatarski, Vice, November 10, 2020: “Given the last four years, it is difficult to know if there is any clear preference among Vietnam’s top party officials. Trump’s policies, especially on trade, have been hugely beneficial for Vietnam at times, but detrimental at others. ‘Trump has been a source of frustration to the Vietnamese in that his policies have been so bipolar,’ said Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington D.C. who specializes in Southeast Asia. ‘He’s so transactional, and they understand transactional, but he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership [trade deal], and no country did more to get into the TPP than Vietnam, so they were angry.’”

Biden in a rights dilemma in strategic SE Asia, David Hutt, Asia Times, November 10, 2020: “Moreover, some issues are well-established. Nobody expects the Biden presidency to change America’s acceptance of Vietnam’s one-party communist system and its widespread human rights abuses, a bipartisan consensus established during the Obama administration because of Hanoi’s opposition to Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea. ‘US policy has failed the Vietnamese people,’ commented Representative Christopher Smith at a hearing of the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations in July 2018, noting the Trump administration’s continuance of Obama’s policy. ‘This is a bipartisan criticism. We have enriched Vietnam’s Communist leaders and coddled their interests at the expense of the hope and desires of the Vietnamese people for liberty and human rights.’”

In 2018, Government Restrictions on Religion Reach Highest Level Globally in More Than a Decade, Pew Research Center, November 10, 2020: “As of 2018, most of the 56 countries with high or very high levels of government restrictions on religion are in the Asia-Pacific region (25 countries, or half of all countries in that region) or the Middle East-North Africa region (18 countries, or 90% of all countries in the region)…. Out of the five regions examined in the study, the Middle East and North Africa continued to have the highest median level of government restrictions in 2018 (6.2 out of 10). However, Asia and the Pacific had the largest increase in its median government restrictions score, rising from 3.8 in 2017 to 4.4 in 2018, partly because a greater number of governments in the region used force against religious groups, including property damage, detention, displacement, abuse and killings.”

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