For thousands of years, farmers in Vietnam’s rural communes have supplemented their incomes by producing handicrafts in the post harvest season.

These villages tended to specialize in a specific craft item: from fine crockery to baskets to traditional lacquered woodwork. The trade secrets have been passed from generation to generation.

At the moment, these villages are finding it increasingly difficult to survive in the new global economy. Complicated procedures have hindered them from accessing subsidized bank loans and government efforts to expand this cottage industry have proven ineffective. General Secretary of the Vietnam Association of Craft Villages, Luu Duy Dan sat down with Thanh Nien Weekly to explore the bigger picture.

What is happening these days in Vietnam’s handicraft villages?

Vietnam’s handicraft villages have developed in line with Vietnam’s rural economic growth. According to last year’s statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam is home to 2,790 craft villages which produce 200 kinds of products.

However, these craft villages have stayed afloat largely on their own. Cooperation is weak among the small scale operations. They face a whole host of difficulties: limited production spaces, poor production infrastructure, unqualified laborers, unstable material sources, you name it. What’s more, the limited coordination between these production households has prevented some craft villages from securing big contracts.

Kids coming up in these villages often love the traditional careers, but they avoid them due to the low income involved. These children end up leaving their villages to work in cities as construction workers, motorbike taxi drivers, and stevedores.

We are not doing enough to save this crucial aspect of our society. Many of our policies are not in line with the reality these craftsmen face. Local authorities have proven unmindful and irresponsible towards these communities. As a result, some investors flinch at the prospect of investing in these villages.

In a glaring catch-22, craft firms wishing to secure government subsidized loans must employ 50 laborers or more, under current policy. Meanwhile, most of the firms are small and cannot expand production because they don’t qualify for subsidized loans.

If we don’t start paying more attention to them, many handicraft villages will be lost or continue to limp on in this half-dead manner.

What role do craft villages play in the rural economy

Craft villages have made an important contribution to the export economy. But, most importantly, they create jobs in rural areas. In 2007 craft exports accounted for only US$760 million of the country’s total export revenues of $35 billion. On the other hand, craft villages generated jobs for 11 million people, including the disabled, the elderly, and children. As more and more arable land is seized for large development projects, handicraft production is emerging as the only viable endeavor for rural farmers.

A thriving village economy can help reduce social ills, foster close sentiment among villagers, and attract visitors curious about Vietnam’s traditional culture. Many craft villages have become successful tourist destinations.

Under current policies, some craft villages are thriving, while others are stagnating. What are the reasons for this?

It all comes down to production planning. Bat Trang craft village has a pottery market. Its production is organized under existing business law and the small firms operating there have a good understanding of that law. The village market promotes trade, promotes technological advances in production, and has secured stable material sources for its manufacturers. As a result, Bat Trang has been able to net large contracts from straight-laced companies. What’s more, the village’s pottery makers have managed to infiltrate the overseas market, while at the same time attracting domestic buyers with reasonable prices.

After the economic recession (in 2008), some craft villages succeeded in tapping the domestic market, where there’s a large demand for stone, wood, and bronze products that bear cultural significance.

Don’t some craft villages become even poorer after following their traditional career?

That’s a serious problem. Some craft villages are struggling right now. Non Chuong Village is a good example. Each production household in the village makes about two or three hats per day. They cannot possibly survive in the new global economy using their traditional production model. This should be cause for alarm. We still lack many things. We have not yet developed a school that specializes in the training of craftspeople; we only have general policies [on handicraft village development]. Meanwhile, production space in the villages is shrinking. Many villages have no ponds or sewers - a circumstance that poses grave risks to the environment.

So, what should we do to deal with these issues?

The main difficulty is the trajectory of capital and development. We need to have a long-term vision for these villages.

The procedures for accessing bank loans should be simplified, advanced technology should be applied, and we should work towards tapping both the domestic and overseas markets. Current regulations on capital need to be brought in line with reality.

Craft villages also face difficulties in terms of manpower, and material sources. The government has planned to train one million laborers for craft villages between now and 2020. We (the Vietnam Association of Craft Villages) have proposed three training models: training laborers for developing new craft villages, training laborers for production of materials and improving manpower in production areas.

Now, most craftspeople are trained by skilled veterans. The training is not officially organized with the support of local authorities or the government.

We should regard the development of these villages as a rural and social development issue, which will help generate jobs, contribute to poverty reduction and reduce social evils.

Progress is paving its way through Vietnam’s ancient cities and no one knows what to save and what to toss.

After several debates regarding preservation efforts in Hanoi, the nation still lacks an agency capable of evaluating the historical significance of a given site. What’s more, Vietnam needs technicians who know how to preserve the relics it wants to keep.

Olivier Tessier, researcher from the French School of Asian Studies (École Française d’Extrême-Orient, EFEO), sat down with Thanh Nien Weekly to discuss what Vietnam can do to hold on to its cultural heritage.

Thanh Nien Weekly: How do you assess the historical value of a place like the Thang Long Imperial Citadel?

Olivier Tessier: The imperial citadel has great historical and cultural value. It was the capital of the Ly, Tran and Le dynasties as well as a major center for cultural and economic exchange between Vietnam, China, Champa and other countries in Southeast Asia.

A section of Hoang Hoa Tham Street, thought to be part of the citadel, was recently excavated during the construction of an overpass. What are your thoughts on that?

- Cities run into this problem all over the world – Rome, Paris, Athena, etc. We want to preserve our heritage as well as develop our cities. Meanwhile, cities can’t develop if everything is preserved. Hanoi is a city with a long history. When you build roads, you’re going to run into relics of the past – as was the case in Hoang Hoa Tham Street.

So, what can Vietnam do in this case? If you ban all construction, you’ll stymie socioeconomic development. Every year in France, some 700 square kilometers of land are set aside for the construction of roads, railways and private and public buildings. Underground relics are definitely destroyed during the construction. Inevitably this leads to disputes among politicians, scientists, residents and economic sectors. So, in 2002, the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), was established to research the protection of archaeological relics.

While researching 20 percent of the 700 square kilometers, INRAP combs the project sites, work out their maps, and photograph them, before a decision on the use of the site is issued. Construction projects are seldom stopped. INRAP doesn’t make the decision, politicians do, but only after considering our findings regarding the site’s historial and cultural value. They weigh those findings against issues such as land planning, and the development demand of the surrounding community.

Such an agency can’t make everyone happy, but it can cool down disputes by establishing a legal procedure for potential construction projects. Such an agency could help Vietnamese authorities make decisions in cases like Hoang Hoa Tham Street. Once again, however, you can’t please everyone.

But, we should strive to maintain our cultural heritage for posterity...

- Right, you are right. Everyone agrees with you. But, you can’t save everything. Hanoi might not have become the capital of Vietnam if construction had been banned, a thousand years ago, to maintain historical integrity.

There are a number of ways you can approach the preservation of a given site. You can preserve relics on-site. You can study relics and then remove them to museums. Additionally, you can bury them so that future generations, with more advanced technology, can study them further.

There are different methods (for preservation) but the goal is to maintain something that scientists can continue to study and preserve evidence of the past for future generations

What should we do about the Thang Long Imperial Citadel?

- The discovery of archaeological relics at the imperial citadel is of great significance to Vietnam’s history. The relic site has two unique features. The first is that the site sits on top of five meters of sediment filled with objects that span 13 centuries (from the 8th-19th). The second is that the space above ground continues to be used.

There are older and better heritage sites in the country, but Thang Long is especially interesting because it contains a long-term history. It is here, in the space of a few hectares, that Vietnam’s political center has been established over the course of a thousand years.

This historical gem sits in the middle of Hanoi, an expensive city that’s rapidly modernizing. Moreover, it is in the center of Ba Dinh political area, adjacent to the National Assembly’s building. For that reason, its development has been widely debated in recent years.

So, what’s the best option in this case?

- Now, we must determine how to best preserve the site and develop a working plan for the project. Foreign and local experts agree that there’s no single best recipe for handling this scenario. It’s not like baking a cake.

Research proposals from the Institute of Archaeology (of Vietnam) have proposed that part of the site be left open for sightseeing, while the rest be covered with land and soil to protect it from the elements. This should be urgently implemented. In fact, the relic has been affected by rain, sunshine, and moisture since it was unearthed eight years ago.

Is there anything else Vietnam can do to preserve its cultural relics?

- I think Vietnam should train more experts in the technical aspects of preserving archaeological relics in particular, and cultural relics in general. Archaeologists cannot succeed without this technical understanding and capacity. This is a subject that is taught at many universities, especially in Europe.

Officials call for more regulation amid shady dealings between Docs and Drug Suits

Inpatients at Nguyen Trai Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Several experts and policymakers have said that Vietnamese hospitals are paying unreasonably high prices for medicine.

Vietnamese hospitals are paying unreasonably high prices for medicine, according to several experts and health policymakers.

Critics have alleged that backroom deals between drug manufacturers and hospitals have resulted in doctors prescribing drugs that patients don’t need in exchange for kickbacks.

The recent dust up goes back to December of 2009 when inspections in public hospitals turned up irregularities and outright scams.

Officials and Ho Chi Minh City residents were outraged this spring when city inspectors revealed that doctors at the 115 People’s Hospital had pushed outpatients to purchase medicines at the pharmacy for inflated prices. The hospital had not complied with laws requiring it to hold competitive bidding prior to purchasing pharmaceuticals.

In March, investigators from the Drug Administration of Vietnam found that a HCMC University Medical Center physician had received VND528 million ($27,687) in July last year in kickbacks from the US Schering Plough Pharmaceutical office for selling hepatitis medicine.

He was not alone.

Legislators have found that public hospitals have purchased pharmaceuticals, particularly imported drugs, at 150-300 percent mark-ups, said Nguyen Duc Thu, deputy head of the Social Affairs Section at the National Assembly Office.

“Some hospitals have spent more on medicines than one would at local retail outlets. Such high prices have badly hurt patients and health insurance companies,” he said at a June 26 health policy seminar in the northern Vinh Phuc Province.

“Patients have not benefited from pharmaceutical promotions aimed at wholesalers and prescribing doctors,” he added. Thu claimed to have evidence that many hospitals hadn’t held competitive bids and that it was difficult to prevent backdoor deals.

In Vietnam, everything from unemployment to health insurance is regulated by a governmental body, Vietnam Social Insurance (VSI). Representatives from VSI are fuming about the rising costs of medicine.

The organization recently reported that drug costs account for 60 percent of its annual health expenditures.

“This is an unreasonably high proportion,” said the agency director Le Bach Hong. “Several countries in the region spend far less. China pays 45 percent, Indonesia pays 38 percent and Thailand pays 35 percent.”

Experts are concerned that health insurance policyholders are paying exorbitant prices for medicine due to poor management of public hospitals.

Hong said that many hospitals paid between 10-30 percent more than their retail value. “Wholesale prices are higher than retail. It is really unreasonable,” he said.

In Vietnam, the government used to cover all health costs for those who could not pay their way. This included the nation’s poor, children under six years old, orphans and those who contributed to the nation’s fight for independence.

Early this year, a new health insurance law changed all of that. Several members of this group now have to cover between 5-20 percent of their health care costs.

Where’s the bid?

In 2007 the ministries of Health and Finance passed a law requiring public hospitals to hold competitive bidding before purchasing a specific drug and prescribing it to patients.

Experts have charged that some hospitals have agreed to buy medicines at unreasonably high prices and have kicked back commissions from drug manufacturers.

Vietnam’s state insurance provider is left footing the bill.

“The insurance agencies bought these medicines,” said director Hong of VSI. “But the high prices were negotiated by the hospitals and pharmaceutical firms.”

Critics have offered, as evidence, the lack of consistency in prices. Ta Van Bang, a senior official at VSI’s Health Insurance Department, said that some public hospitals paid exponentially more for the same drug than others.

Experts also said certain doctors over-prescribe medicines in the hope of receiving large illicit dividends.

Hong said that, in a recent case, a 70-year-old man was prescribed nine different drugs—some of which he did not need. “This means patients paid more for drugs that could do more harm than good,” he said.

“The insurance agency could save VND1 trillion per year if hospitals cut 10 percent of [unreasonable] prescriptions. With that money, we could cover 2.5 million of the nation’s poor,” he said.

Poor management

In a recent report to the National Assembly, Vietnam’s legislature, the Drug Administration of Vietnam committed to take action to control medicine prices. The agency vowed to establish maximum retail prices and promotion rates.

By law, pharmaceutical companies and importers are required to report a product’s price to authorities before it goes on the market. Manufacturers are required to announce all rate increases. Authorities reserve the right to demand that manufacturers lower prices that are deemed unreasonable.

The Drug Administration has admitted, however, it could not tackle such a Herculean task.

Vietnamese authorities oversee more than 22,000 pharmaceutical products. They have not, thus far, established maximum prices for all of these drugs, much less established a definition for “unreasonable cost.”

Some members of the government are suggesting that VSI should assume control of negotiating purchases.

Dang Nhu Loi, deputy head of the NA’s Social Affairs Committee, said the Health Ministry should prevent unreasonably high drug prices at public hospitals “at the root of the problem by allowing the insurance agencies to hold open bids before public hospitals buy medicines.”

He said the arrangement could eliminate the risk of doctors favoring certain medicines for the wrong reasons.

Doctor Tran Van Ban, a member of the NA’s Social Affairs Committee, argued that the Drug Administration should be able to obtain information on the production costs of imported drugs rather easily. Based on that information, he said, they should be able to establish “reasonable” prices inside Vietnam.

Ban added that India dealt with a similar problem in 1975. Costs were reduced by making the purchasing process more transparent, he said.

Reducing drug prices benefits all: WHO official

The Vietnamese government and its people, particularly the poor, would all equally benefit from policies aiming to reduce drug prices, Dr. Jean-Marc Olivé (photo), the World Health Organization Representative for Vietnam told Thanh Nien Weekly in a phone interview.

Thanh Nien Weekly: How do drug costs in Vietnam rank, regionally

Dr. Jean-Marc Olivé: I think that there are very limited surveys [on drug prices] that have been done in Vietnam. [My] recommendation would be to continue to do surveys. It is important to analyze the insurance  claims of the expenditure on medicines, and all of this should be monitored by the government as well as the price of the top 20 medicines reimbursed by health insurance. The idea is that the government should adopt a general policy for drugs and monitor prices of medicine. That is what it is all about.

But in a recent report sent to the National Assembly, the Drug Administration of Vietnam pointed out many difficulties in monitoring the drug prices in Vietnam. Do you think the job of monitoring drug prices will be tough for Vietnam?

To adjust and monitor the price of medicine and ensure the price is affordable is a challenge faced by many countries like Vietnam that are growing very fast.  One of the recommendations that we have made to the government is to monitor drug prices. I think many of the instruments are in place, and should be used to monitor and find ways to reduce prices, as other countries have done. Just by monitoring you can achieve a lot.

Is the WHO aware of any untoward or illicit activity on the part of pharmaceutical companies selling medicines to Vietnamese public hospitals?

No, the WHO has not done any study in this area. We are giving support to the Ministry of Health, developing guidelines and regulations for appropriate drug use in hospitals. That’s the only thing we are doing. This is the business of the government, we are not involved.

We are just technical advisors. It is up to the government to implement laws and guidelines. It is not the role of the WHO.

What should the Vietnamese health authorities do to better protect poor and vulnerable patients?

I think the big challenge for the government is covering 100 percent of the Vietnamese population. One easy way would be to reduce the price of drugs seeing as they total 60 percent of reimbursement. [But] this is still far more than most developed countries where the proportion of drugs that are reimbursed overall is 10-15 percent.

It will be difficult to sustain this because of the cost of healthcare that increases regularly, and the higher proportion of drugs to be reimbursed by health insurance in the future.

One very good way to ensure sustainability and reduce costs of medical expenses would be to reduce the costs of drugs.

From what I understand, the government is trying very hard to address this issue; one of the priorities of the government is [to] increase access to healthcare for all Vietnamese while giving priority to the poorer ones. They have dramatically increased the coverage and now they are trying to ensure that the poorer people have the same access to healthcare as the wealthy. This is easier said than done. Many poor people are in remote regions and there are difficulties to do with transport and accessing healthcare. But we are on the right track. By increasing access to health insurance, you will include all the strata of the population, particularly the poor. (Reported by An Dien)

Farmers whose lives have been ruined by pollution in the Thi Vai River are not going away, and neither are their demands that Vedan pay for the damages in full

Farmers in Thanh An Commune, an impoverished area on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City that is still reeling from 14 years of pollution from an upstream Vedan factory that destroyed sea stocks and crops

Nguyen Xuan Ty said he might as well have died several years ago along with the section of the Thi Vai River killed off by Vedan’s secret and illegal discharge of untreated wastewater.

In 2003, upon learning that his stocks of clam and blood cockle had been all but wiped out by the pollution, Ty had no idea what he would do.

“I was at a loss. I was just kneeling down [in front of the dead stocks]. It was sheer luck that I didn’t commit suicide,” Ty told Thanh Nien Weekly.

The water in which he bred his animals, mostly clams and cockle, in Ho Chi Minh City’s Thanh An Commune had been seriously polluted since 1999, Ty said. As Vedan had already paid out compensation to local farmers whose stocks it damaged with pollution in 1996, residents had been suspicious of the Taiwanese firm. But they couldn’t prove their claims with evidence until a decade later.

In September 2008, Vedan Vietnam, the Taiwanese monosodium glutamate (MSG) maker, was caught by government inspectors dumping its untreated wastewater into the Thi Vai River in the southern Dong Nai Province. The company had avoided detection by hiding pipes deep in the river, and had been sending toxic liquids through those pipes for 14 years, inspectors found.

An Environment Ministry-authorized study by the Institute of Environment and Natural Resources found in December 2009 that Vedan was responsible for 90 percent of the pollution then plaguing the Thi Vai River.

The 2009 report indicated that Vedan should compensate farmers in Dong Nai Province, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province and Ho Chi Minh City with a total of VND1.7 trillion (US$89.2 million) for the damages it had caused, including the destruction of sea farms and damages to land crops on the banks of the river.

But the company has dismissed the damage figures presented by the institute as groundless. Vedan already inspected and assessed the damage by itself and has offered compensation far less than the government-sponsored study said the farmers are entitled to.

The waiting game

The Institute of Environment and Natural Resources concluded that Thanh An Commune in HCMC’s Can Gio District, 60 kilometers to the southeast of the Vedan plant at the mouth of the Thi Vai River, had been hit by Vedan’s wastewater. Despite the severe damages to the area, the level of pollution there was low compared to the most affected areas, the institute said.

“I don’t know how serious the pollution is. I just know it had completely annihilated my stocks in 2003,” Ty from Thanh An Commune said.

Ty lost around VND1.3 billion he had invested in 2003 alone and has been in heavy debt since. His only income now is from a small sweet soup eatery in the commune.

Many other locals in the commune whose meal ticket used to be fishing and breeding seafood have also switched to other jobs to eke out a living, said Le Hong Phuc, chairman of the Thanh An Commune Farmers’ Society.

The commune is one of the five poorest in Can Gio District and among the 20 most impoverished in HCMC.

Thanh An Commune locals had filed complaints about the suspected pollution caused by Vedan for years before 2008, when the company was caught red-handed, Phuc said.

But they’ve been waiting in vain.

“The farmers have had enough of waiting for the compensation,” Phuc said. “Vedan said the pollution level was not that serious and they had assessed the damage by themselves. But we have never ever seen a single Vedan official come here to ‘assess.’”

Thanh An farmers have demanded compensation totaling around VND46 billion. Vedan said in a statement to the HCMC government that it would only pay VND7 billion.

Elsewhere, farmers in the provinces of Ba Ria-Vung Tau and Dong Nai, where the pollution level is concluded to be much more serious than that in Thanh An Commune, are also destined for the same fate as Vedan has been offering only one-fifth of the claim to Ba Ria-Vung Tau and less than one-one-hundredth of the claim to Dong Nai.

Now or never

Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet said during a meeting with locals in HCMC’s Cu Chi District on June 24 that the government would not tolerate any pollution activities of any company in the country

Triet pointed to the Vedan case.

“The US$20 billion BP pledged to compensate for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could not bail the company out of the public outcry all over the world. The crime Vedan had caused to the Vietnamese people was much more serious than just a pollution crime.”

Earlier this month, Environment Minister Pham Khoi Nguyen indicated that the government was determined to press criminal charges against major polluters in the country.

“We’ve backed into a corner in terms of protecting the environment and it’s time for strict measures against those who try to cover up acts of pollution,” he said.

Lawyer Nguyen Van Hau, the legal consultant for Thanh An Commune farmers in the Vedan case, said everything is ready for the lawsuit he plans to file at the Can Gio District People’s Court later this month.

“They [Vedan] have defied not just the affected farmers. They have challenged the public and the country as well,” Hau told Thanh Nien Weekly.

Hau said he would first propose that HCMC farmers boycott all Vedan products at a meeting with the municipal farmers’ society on July 2.

Farmers in Ba Ria-Vung Tau and Dong Nai have also indicated their determination to bring the case to court, according to local media reports.

Hopes for justice

Wayne Lewis, a HCMC-based environment consultant, said he was convinced that the lawsuit would deliver solid results, given the national support behind the farmers.

[The impact of the environment pollution] here is far greater than it would be anywhere else in the world because there is no infrastructure in Vietnam for waste management,” Lewis said.

“What do Vietnamese people think about foreign companies coming over here and polluting your country? What do you feel if those major polluters are coming to kill your people, and to maim and deform your children?”

Ty of Thanh An Commune said he was also ready for the lawsuit.

“I will go to the end of it, it could be my last chance,” Ty said.

“I only hope justice will be done.”

Hanoi’s old-school portraiture still captures the moment

75-year-old Nguyen Bao Nguyen, as one of old-Hanoi’s best portraitists, has been working at that easel in that 10.2 meter-square-room for nearly a half of century

The tiny old shop on Hang Ngang Street is surrounded by sparkling fashion boutiques crowded with hipsters.

But inside Truyen than Bao Nguyen (Bao Nguyen Portraits), it’s a different world.

The distinguished and aging artist, thin and white-haired, sits cross-legged in repose at his easel, the way he has been doing for 50 years.

Portraitist Nguyen Bao Nguyen, 75, began working at that easel in that 10.2 meter-square-room as a young man, a whimsical bohemian from a middle class family trying to make ends meet during the war years.

He was supposed to have gained a degree in 1960, but he took a severe stomach ache the day of his graduation exam as an omen, and he’s been living with ink-stained fingertips ever since.

The young Hanoian had always drawn as a self-taught artist at home, and when he decided to follow the traditional urban trade no one in his family had yet plied, Mom and Dad supported him.

The investment wasn’t much compared to the possible returns. He just needed paper, charcoal, and pencil-brushes, which he made himself with the ends of incense sticks and matches.

It turned out to be a good move, as he quickly earned a reputation as one of old-Hanoi’s best young truyen than artists. The 60s were an energetic time in downtown Hanoi, and Nguyen brought in a good deal of money with the art.

Old gold

Truyen than (Conveying the Soul) portraiture first showed its face in the small streets and alleys of Hanoi’s old quarter in the early 20th century. The simple black and white charcoal drawings were meant to convey the essence and spirit of whatever their subject was in a non-ostentatious or sensational way.

The art came about as people wanted more personal depictions of their relatives to use for ancestor worship. The artistic renditions of family members copied from old photographs quickly became popular, especially for wedding photos.

For the first time, not only the super-wealthy could decorate their homes with realistic images of their nuptials.

And some people simply wanted copies of their photos, or to create a new image as their old photos were fading.

Truyen than family portraits became a popular ornament in many Vietnamese homes. For a small price, people could easily have a high-quality, large-size portrait hung in their living-room.

Reinvention

According to Nguyen, truyen than drawers are not copycats. He said that the key was in making the viewer feel both the aura and spirit of the character in the picture, whether it is a human or still-life.

“The special features of each character must be found by the artist’s senses. The spirit could be expressed in any detail like the corner of one’s eyes, the wrinkle on the forehead, a snub nose or just a hair on the face. No one can teach you that.”

A truyen than portrait must not only look like the character but also “make viewers feel that the character is sitting there and talking to them,” said Nguyen, adding that it usually takes him a week to finish a piece.

“A 10-20 percent divergence from the character’s real face or figure is a success... but I only draw a portrait once, it’s too hard to repeat.”

He said the inspiration comes to him only once, and he does not like to copy his “emotion” again and again.

But he admitted that there were some pictures that he has had to fix four or five times before they were done.

"I looked [at the character] for a long time but the person in the drawing still couldn"t talk to me," he told Sports and Culture newspaper.

He once spent two years completing a portrait of writer Lan Khai from an old and stained photo Khai’s son had given him.

Over the period, Nguyen read Khai’s writings obsessively to find true inspiration.

Because the photo was blurry, and Nguyen also loved Khai’s writings, it took an immense amount of time, he said. He wanted to draw the perfect picture.

All paid off when he saw how moved Khai’s son was when he saw the picture of his father.

“This is him,” the son told Nguyen.

Bringing out the dead

Despite the abundance of imported ink now available in Hanoi, Nguyen still uses his own handmade ink.

To do so, he burns scraps of rubber tires with a kerosene lamp. He uses the soot collected from that smoke to create pitch-black ink that stands in stunning contrast with his white paper.

He also makes his own pencils.

He makes them with the slender end of an incense stick or match and then ties them tightly to chopstick-like bamboo stick with a little copper wire.

Nguyen said his most rewarding work was when families came to him asking for pictures of their dead parents, many of whom were killed or went missing during the war.

Many of his customers have burst into tears upon receiving their folks’ pictures. Some say the drawings have helped them through the pain of missing their loved ones.

Blogger Hoang Duc Nha said Nguyen has a guestbook full of praise, appreciation, regards and letters.

“That is the most precious gift that I’ve gotten in my career.”

But he worries the art is slowly fading away.

“The city used to have over 300 truyen than shops,” said Nguyen. “But now we can count the number of artists on two hands.”

Nude photos of a provincial leader were found in the cell phone of a sex worker

Defendants are escorted out of a trial in February of a high school principal having sex with his students in the northern mountainous Ha Giang Province. The Party’s Inspection Commission has proposed dismissal of Ha Giang head while police sources accused that he had involved in the sex scandal.

Communist Party inspectors have recommended the dismissal of a provincial head due to his “unhealthy relations” and “irresponsible way of life.”

The inspectors said Nguyen Truong To, chairman of the northern province of Ha Giang’s People’s Committee, the local government, has committed several violations. Most of these violations pertained to To’s lifestyle.

According to several police sources, To might have had sexual relations with a sex worker in 2005, when he headed a department in the people’s committee. Two other sex workers earlier this year also accused To of having sexual relations with them.

During the 32nd meeting of the Party’s Inspection Committee, inspectors recommended that To be dismissed from his posts as Deputy Secretary of Ha Giang Province Party Unit, Chairman of Ha Giang People’s Committee and Deputy of Ha Giang People’s Council, which acts as the provincial legislature.

In a statement released on July 5, the Party’s Inspection Commission said that To had “seriously violated the conduct [expected] of a [good] Party member” and “negatively impacted the image of a leading official.”

The Party’s Inspection Committee had warned To about his violations but he failed to admit wrongdoing and did not seem receptive to improving his behavior, according to the statement.

The inspectors ordered the provincial Party Unit chief and director of Ha Giang Police Department to file official reports regarding their knowledge of To’s wrongdoing. In their statement, the inspectors also proposed punitive measures against the two officials who had known about To’s dalliances since 2005 but failed to report it to higher ups.

Nude photos

The inspectors did not articulate the specifics of To’s wrongdoings in their official statements, but according to the police sources, To was alleged of having patronized sex workers on two occasions.

According to the police sources, the first instance took place in November 2006 when Ha Giang police busted a prostitution ring. Police found nude photos of To posed “in different positions” saved in the phone of the sex worker, in addition to several text messages sent from his cell phone number.

The case was reported to Nguyen Binh Van, Director of Ha Giang Province Police Department and Hoang Minh Nhat, secretary of the provincial Party Unit and only resulted in internal rebuke.

Fast times at Viet Lam secondary schoo

Nguyen Truong To, deputy secretary of Ha Giang Province Party Unit, Chairman of Ha Giang People’s Committee and deputy of Ha Giang People’s Council

In the second case, a high school student accused To of having sexual relations with her when she was under 18.

Last November, the Ha Giang Court sentenced Sam Duc Xuong – former principal of Viet Lam Secondary School in Vi Xuyen District – to ten and a half years after he was found guilty of statutory rape.

Prosecutors alleged that the principal had abused his position to coerce young women into having sex with him. Two of his students, Nguyen Thi Hang, 19, and Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy, 18, were sentenced to six and five years respectively for procuring other young girls to have sex with older men.

All three defendants appealed for more lenient sentences. Then, during their February appeals hearing, they changed their pleas. They were not guilty, they announced.

Two years earlier, the young women claimed, they were forced to have sex with local officials.

For the first time, Hang and Thuy named ten men, including To and other senior government officials, whom they claimed had had sex with them when they were underage.

The accusations came to light during the February 1 hearing of the Ha Giang Court of Appeals. The court found that last year"s trial by the Vi Xuyen District Court (as well as the supporting investigations) had "seriously violated" regulations. As a result, they ordered a fresh investigation of the case.

According to an anonymous police source, Hang has told the investigators she had sex with Xuong [the principal] and other Ha Giang officials for money between 2008 and 2009. The source says that she implicated senior officials from the Ha Giang People’s Committee, police and entrepreneurs in the province.

Tran Dinh Trien, Thuy’s defense attorney, told the Tuoi Tre newspaper on July 7 that he was not surprised by the results of the Party’s Inspection Commission.

“In the Sam Duc Xuong case, the defendants produced a black list accusing several Ha Giang officials of having sex with them,” he said. “Nguyen Truong To topped the list.”

Trien also said he heard about To’s nude photos after Xuong’s trial but he couldn’t verify the information as a lawyer. “Now the [Party’s] Central Inspection Commission has clearly concluded the issue,” he added.

Party officials call for Ha Giang leader’s ouster

A senior official has endorsed the a recent proposal by the Communist Party’s Inspection Commission to dismiss the chairman of Ha Giang Province’s People’s Committee for his alleged role in a wide-scale sex scandal.

“I think violating ethical norms is not a minor issue,” Hoang Trung Luyen, head of Ha Giang Party Unit’s Propaganda and Education Commission, told the Tuoi Tre newspaper on July 8. “There should be stricter [measures] if violations of the Penal Code were found,”

Luyen was speaking to the media about the case of Nguyen Truong To. Party inspectors recently called for To’s dismissal from his current posts as Deputy Secretary of Ha Giang Province Party Unit, Chairman of Ha Giang People’s Committee, the local government, and Deputy of Ha Giang People’s Council, the provincial legislature.

Luyen confirmed that police notified Party officials after finding To’s nude photos in a cell phone belonging to a sex worker. Luyen said that the revelation resulted in internal rebuke. He also confirmed with Thanh Nien that To remains on next term’s ballot for key posts in the province.

Nguyen Dinh Huong, former vice head of the Central Party’s Organization Commission, said To deserves to be subjected to stricter measures.

“A Party member who is the head of a locality and has deteriorated should be dismissed from the Party, not just his posts,” he said, adding that there should also be repercussions for officials who knew of To’s actions but failed to report them to higher authorities.

Meanwhile, Le Quang Trieu, head of Ha Giang Party Unit’s Inspection Department said any measures against To would be taken by the Party’s Secretariat.

The authors of a ten-year plan to battle the effects of Agent Orange have witnessed the first trickle of US funding and hope for more

Two children affected by Agent Orange at Peace Village in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tu Du Maternity Hospital, a home for Agent Orange victims. Despite growing declarations of goodwill from high-level US officials, funding for Vietnamese Agent Orange victims remains elusive.

The US House of Representatives has just approved a War Spending Bill which includes US$12 million for dioxin clean-up at Da Nang Airport during this fiscal year. The bill, passed on July 27, also approved an additional $13.3 billion in funding for US Veterans affected by the same chemical. The money symbolizes the first step in funding a $300 million, decade-long effort to remediate the effects of a chemical campaign waged by the US military during the Vietnam War.

“It’s a good start,” Congressman Eni Faleomavaega (D-AS), chairman of the subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment told Thanh Nien Weekly by phone. “More needs to be done.”

In June, the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange and Dioxin, an independent consortium of scientists, private donors and policy-makers, issued a comprehensive ten-year action plan for the clean-up of highly toxic “hot spots” and the treatment of disabled people throughout Vietnam.

The group set a $30 million annual target to fund comprehensive restoration efforts - from the re-forestation of defoliated countryside to an improvement in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers. The hope was for the US to take the lead on the funding and spur private donations from American companies doing business in Vietnam.

The recent approval of spending signifies something of a victory for those who have worked hard to increase US funding to Agent Orange victims inside Vietnam - though it is unclear how far the money will travel. The language of the bill approves the $12 million in “assistance for Vietnam to support the remediation of dioxin contamination at the Da Nang Airport, which poses extreme risks to human health and welfare, and related health activities.”

In a release made subsequent to the approval, Susan Hammond, director of the US-based War Legacies Project wrote: “How much, if any, of the funding recently allocated will go towards the ‘related health activities’ is not yet known.” Hammond added that some analysts have estimated that the cost of cleaning up the former base alone will run to $34 million.

The airport has received a great deal of attention of late.

Early this month, a delegation of three US Senators visited the Da Nang Airport, where American soldiers once loaded more than 11 million gallons of the dioxin-laced defoliant to be sprayed all over the country. The senators then toured a local facility designed to assist deformed and disabled victims of the fat-soluble chemical. According to the US-Vietnam Dialogue group’s action plan, the American Institute of Medicine has linked dioxin to “cancers, diabetes, and nerve and heart disease among people directly and indirectly exposed, and to spina bifida among their offspring.”

Because the known carcinogen is slow to break down, it can persist in soil, ponds and streams for generations. One study in Vietnam discovered high concentrations of the chemical in fatty tissue samples taken from fish and livestock living in heavily sprayed areas.

In an interview with a Vietnamese newspaper, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) told reporters he was aiming to raise between $20-30 million for victims here, a sum that represented a tenfold increase of the $3 million annual allotment that the US had set aside in the fiscal years of 2007, 2009 and 2010. During a recent interview, Rep. Faleomavaega (D-AS) referred to the $3 million as “just a pittance.”

In response to a list of questions sent by Thanh Nien Weekly, Sen. Harkin’s staff backed away from an exact figure, and confirmed only that Harkin would “continue to seek funding” for AO victims. “Things can change,” a staffer noted in the response.

Meanwhile, at home, the US is trying to reconcile stark projections for the care of its retired soldiers and their offspring. Early this year, the US office of Veterans Affairs projected a $42.2 billion increase in domestic Agent Orange-related medical claims over the next decade.

Those affected in Vietnam have not been nearly as fortunate.

According to a report prepared last year by Michael Martin of the Congressional Research Service, much of the initial funding was spent on scientific research and did not reach Vietnamese victims. Since then, there has been greater interest in involving Vietnamese organizations in the effort. There is a hope among those involved in the process that future funding will have more of an impact on the day-to-day lives of the disabled and afflicted here.

Martin’s report closed with a suggestion that the United States could stand to benefit from more generous involvement in the Agent Orange remediation efforts: “US military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have undermined its global image,” it said; and to restore its image, “the United States should more actively engage in ‘soft power’ exercises, such as humanitarian assistance to Vietnam to address its ‘war legacy’ problems.”

Last week, during a visit aimed at discussing regional security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made similarly vague pledges to increase funding for Vietnamese victims.

"We"ve been working with Vietnam for about nine years to try to remedy the effects of Agent Orange,” Clinton told reporters. “I will work to increase our cooperation and make even greater progress together."

A State department spokesman declined to elaborate on any developments.

“We are increasing our funding,” P.J. Crowley told Thanh Nien Weekly. “I don’t know whether it will get to [$30 million per year].”

Phil Sparks, a spokesman for the Agent Orange in Vietnam Information Initiative, a lobbying group, said that a Senate appropriations committee has included $10 million in Vietnamese Agent Orange funding for the 2011 fiscal year. “[The $10 million] will be considered between now and the end of the year,” Sparks said.

He attributes the sudden rise in funding to the publication of the report by the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group.

“They’ve opened the dialogue,” Sparks said.

Despite a lack of firm commitments from private donors, members of the Vietnam-US Dialogue remain optimistic and hopeful.

Charles Bailey can remember arriving in Vietnam as the country liaison for the Ford Foundation in 1997, eager to take on the long-debated problem.

“It was a logjam,” Bailey said. “People [on both sides] were not allowed to talk about it for various reasons.”

Since that time, the Ford foundation has been lauded as one of the principal groups advancing the Agent Orange cause inside Vietnam. Based on figures released in the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group’s plan of action, “the Ford Foundation has provided $11.7 million in grants to develop treatments and support for affected Vietnamese, test and contain contaminated soils, restore landscapes and educate the US public and policymakers on the issue.”

Bailey said he is not concerned that no additional private funding has been committed since the plan’s publication last month: “It’s still early days.”

Bailey did stress the need for “an increased sense of urgency” on the part of policymakers and potential donor corporations.

“There’s a new spirit of hope,” he said of the atmosphere created by the publication of the action plan. “It’s good for people with disabilities; it’s good for US-Vietnam relations. It’s a window of opportunity and, as we know, windows open and they close.”

David Devlin-Foltz, director of the Advocacy Planning and Evaluation Program at the Aspen Institute (a major player in the International Dialogue group), said that he is firmly convinced of the United States’ liability in Vietnam.

On a recent visit to Da Nang Airport, Devlin-Foltz and his colleagues recounted how they had been asked to don disposable shoes to protect themselves from the toxic chemicals that continue to seep up out of the ground.

“We could see and smell how negative the impact was,” Devlin-Foltz said. Not far from where they stood, children continued to play in a pool of water.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, the US has been calling for increased research on the actual effects of the chemical on the Vietnamese population. While it has come to acknowledge 13 conditions and diseases as associated with Agent Orange exposure in its own veterans, it has not done so for those who were on the receiving end of the spraying. Devlin-Foltz has attributed the long delay in US Agent Orange money to a fear of similar claims from war victims all over the world.

“[The refusal to extend US veteran benefits to Vietnamese victims] has largely to do with concern that it could be interpreted as an admission of legal liability that could open [the US government] up to massive damage claims,” he said in a taped press conference.

Devlin-Foltz told Thanh Nien Weekly that he remains patient.

“The action plan calls for activity over a ten year period,” he said. “If it ramps up over time, that’s fine. What we are hoping to do with the [plan] is to make real change in the lives and livelihood of Vietnam.”

A Son Dong sage passes on the art of Chinese calligraphy

The 69-year-old retired farmer and veteran Nghiem Quoc Dat practices writes Chinese calligraphy, which is helpful for people to perfect their character

Every Sunday afternoon, nearly a hundred students gather to listen to the teachings of Nghiem Quoc Dat.

On a recent afternoon, the old man sat in the cramped quarters of his living room—his former classroom. A blousy kerchief hangs from the slight 69 year-old man’s neck like a flag. A large plush blazer ruffles against his narrow shoulders as he paints the beautiful tapered lines of a single Chinese character.

Dat, a retired farmer and former soldier, is perhaps his village’s most vital mind.

Five years ago, he began teaching the lost art of Chinese calligraphy. “I principally began doing this because I wanted the children in my family to carry on our traditional love of learning,” Dat says. “But, what’s more, my village is famous for its lacquered boards and wood panels which are all engraved with the complex characters. The younger generation needs to know about this so they can preserve the village’s traditional trade.”

Located some 25 kilometers from Hanoi, Son Dong Village has long been a home to craftsmen and artisans. The town boasts a number of Confucian scholars still capable of rendering and interpreting the nearly 4,000 year-old pictorial alphabet.

The characters first appeared in Vietnam in the first century BC.

Because the language is character-based (each word is represented by a symbol that must be memorized to be understood) it requires intense study to master. Modern Chinese dictionaries contain more than 47,000 symbols; a “literate” adult may only know between 3,000-4,000.

Portuguese missionaries began developing the current Romanized script in Vietnam in the 16th century to advance evangelical efforts. By the late 19th century, the Chinese alphabet had all but disappeared.

Since then the art has been carried only by artisans and scholars.

Startled by the possibility of its disappearance, Dat consulted the small educational board chaired by his extended family (the Nghiem clan). They encouraged him unanimously to begin teaching at the end of 2006.

The old man shelled out a huge chunk of his meager monthly pension to buy ink and brushes for his students.

He refused to accept any money from the children’s families and cleared out his 25 square-meter living room to make space for students.

The first class was made up entirely of Nghiem kids. He called it Sao Khue, after the Chinese astrological constellation that has served as symbol of art and literature in Chinese and Vietnamese culture.

Dat had no teaching experience when he began his Sunday lectures. But he soon found himself peppering his lessons with poems, puzzles and stories. The old scholar’s lessons don’t merely focus on the technical aspects of classical calligraphy. When teaching a given character, he inevitably delves into its complex Confucian meaning. For example, the symbol for “rest” combines the symbol for “man” and “tree.” Thus, a man sitting near a tree is deemed to be at rest.

His method worked. The floor of Dat’s living room swelled with students crowding onto the floor. He was forced to cap classes at 20 pupils until a local secondary School principal offered him the use of a classroom.

Dat believes in the old Vietnamese adage: net chu net nguoi - literally, “handwriting reveals your character”.

Dat’s tutelage has won praise from satisfied parents.

“We all know that Dat has a profound knowledge and, more than that, lots of personality,” said Van Thi Duyen whose ten-year-old son attends the old teacher’s class. “We all love watching naughty children improve under Dat’s moral guidance.”

In addition to kids, Dat’s classes are frequented by teachers, artisans, farmers, and Buddhist priests who attend whenever they can. Shocked by their dedication, Dat tends to gush when speaking about his pupils.

In some cases, it seems as though the old man’s calligraphy lessons have given some men a new hope in life.

“Tien is a war invalid,” Dat said. “But for the past two years he has driven his three-wheeler some 20 kilometers to come to class. He used to be a hot-tempered man but after a while in my class, he has developed a patience that extends into all things.”

Nguyen Phuc Hiep was born to a poor family in Dong La Village— some 15 kilometers away. Though he loved to learn, Hiep had to leave school to begin working at the age of 13. He now works on construction site and is one of Sao Khue’s top students.

“Studying calligraphy is very interesting,” said Hiep, who enrolled in the class three years ago. “Besides studying the meanings behind each character, I’ve fallen in love with the act of writing them. I really enjoy every lesson and want to organize a class to teach people in my village”

Several Sao Khue alumni have gone on to pursue calligraphy professionally. Thrilled by their success, Dat has no plans of stopping. “I still want more students,” he says. “I will continue to teach free until my health forces me to stop. The biggest reward for me is seeing my students absorbed in their work.”

Growth of Vietnam’s IT sector depends on its ability to combat piracy, Rebecca Ho, IP program strategist with Microsoft, tells Thanh Nien Weekly.

Thanh Nien Weekly: Where does Vietnam stand now, in terms of IT development and copyright protection?

Rebecca Ho: The IT sector and software industry are growing rapidly in Vietnam, while the piracy rate has steadily gone down since 2005. Inevitably, as we have seen in many countries around the world, there are those who will seek to exploit this thirst for technology by producing and selling inferior counterfeit products to consumers and businesses across the region.

In 2009, despite the financial crisis and consequently the general expectation that piracy will worsen, Vietnam was able to contain its piracy rate to 85 percent (according to the Seventh Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study, 2010). This is higher than the regional average piracy rate, and it will need to be further reduced in order not to impede the growth of the IT sector.

No country is immune to the impact of software piracy – it is a global issue that needs to be addressed in every market and Microsoft is working in partnership with local ecosystems, including local governments, educational and industry bodies to ensure we are focusing our efforts in a way that will make the most positive impact and increase growth opportunities for local economies.

Which products of yours are most vulnerable to piracy?

In part, today’s high rates of piracy reflect the surge in demand for software in emerging markets as the benefits of technology are realized. Usually the more popular the products, the more widely they are pirated, such as Windows, Office and Windows Server.

These high rates of piracy represent a need for continued education on the value of genuine software to individuals, business and the economy, and the risks inherent in using counterfeit software.

We are committed to supporting governments as they boost their economies by educating their communities on the value of intellectual property and the opportunity it represents.

In Vietnam, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), of which Microsoft is a member, formed a partnership with VINASA, and the Copyright Office and Inspectorate of the Ministry of Culture, Sports & Tourism, to protect intellectual property rights.

How does copyright infringement in Vietnam affect your company?

Counterfeit software has an enormous impact on the software industry. Microsoft invests a tremendous amount of human and monetary effort in its software development and distribution, which is impacted greatly by the effects of piracy.

Microsoft is determined to protect its customer, reseller, and partner ecosystem from the threats and losses associated with piracy, and to prevent counterfeiters from taking advantage of innocent victims and gaining an unfair advantage over our honest partners.

More importantly, copyright infringement impedes the growth of local IT industry. The government of Vietnam has a clear goal to turn Vietnam into an IT power by 2020, aspiring to export software and digital content services to the world.

To realize that goal, we believe that innovation needs to be fostered. Innovators, however, will not have sufficient incentive to innovate if their intellectual property will not be protected. Emerging economies which have strong intellectual property laws can also benefit from technology and knowledge transfer and strategic alliances with multinational companies such as Microsoft which in turn will help enhance the competitiveness and innovative capacity of the local IT industry.

Has your company sued any individuals or organizations in the country for piracy?

No, we have not. At Microsoft, we believe in first educating (the public) about the benefits of using genuine software, and working with law enforcement agencies as well as our industry association, Business Software Alliance. We believe in taking legal action as a last resort to show that there are serious consequences to the crime.

What measures do you take to minimize piracy?

We focus our activities and investments on combating software counterfeiting and other forms of piracy into a single coordinated effort, the Genuine Software Initiative (GSI). The initiative focuses on increasing investments across three strategic areas: education, engineering and enforcement.

Vietnam finds it difficult to balance the reduction of software use and respect for copyright, while prices of legitimate software are too high compared with people"s income. Does your company have any pricing strategies for the Vietnamese market?

Pricing is only one component of why people choose to pirate software, and not purchase it. Microsoft has many options for delivering value and cost savings for customers. The best pricing usually comes through either the pre-installation from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or from our home and student packages for Office, for example.

Just lowering pricing does not result in less piracy; there is more to it than that. As an example, Lac Viet, another BSA member, whose Dictionary software is priced at US$2.5, probably the same cost of a KFC meal in Vietnam, is also widely pirated. This is clear proof that pricing is not a main factor for piracy.

Many firms find it hard to implement the intellectual property law due to limited financial capacity or awareness. What would you say to them?

Intellectual property protection is an essential part of maintaining a healthy cycle of innovation in the IT industry and it is important that intellectual property rights are respected across borders.

Intellectual property rights protect legitimate businesses by making it possible for companies to focus on the areas which differentiate themselves and their products from the competition, improve product features, and speed up delivery to the market. This spurs growth and job creation that benefits consumers, industry and the economy.

From South Africa to Laos, authorities are cracking down on traders in endangered flesh

Environmental police seize two frozen tigers and one frozen panther from a house in the north-central Nghe An Province’s Dien Chau District on June 22. Conservationists have called for more efforts to stop the trade of endangered species.

Experts are lauding the recent seizure of two frozen tigers and a frozen panther in the north-central province of Nghe An. Still, they say more must be done to stop Vietnamese traffickers plundering the world’s precious fauna.

In an extensive response sent to Thanh Nien Weekly, Douglas Hendrie, technical advisor for Education for Nature-Vietnam (ENV), the country"s first local nongovernmental organization (NGO) to focus on conservation of nature and the environment, said that a more holistic approach is needed to staunch the loss of wildlife.

Vietnamese authorities must collaborate across borders to take down the international networks responsible for the trade, he said. At home, they must make sure local markets are free of the illicit products.

“We are focused too much on the act and too little on the enterprise,” Hendrie said.

Thomas Osborn, coordinator of the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC’s Greater Mekong Program, said that the environmental police have demonstrated once again their dedication to halting the illegal trade in protected species such as tigers.

“If we hope to save the country’s remaining tigers and other threatened species, it will take ever increasing vigilance from authorities and a strong commitment by the government to support and promote existing wildlife laws.”

As few as 30 wild tigers are estimated to survive in Vietnam.

Despite their protection under Vietnamese and international law, tigers and panthers continue to be illegally hunted and traded across Vietnam and Southeast Asia. On the black market, tiger parts are sold as food, souvenirs and the components of medicine. According to a TRAFFIC statement released on July 2, tiger bone wine remains in high demand throughout the region.

Tiger farming

On June 22, environmental police entered the farm of 53- year-old Le Xuan Thoan in Dien Chau District in the north-central province of Nghe An. VietNamNet news website cited reports from the local Forest Protection Agency that Thoan’s farm housed two rhinoceroses and a host of other wild animals.

Inside his house, they discovered a menagerie of a different kind.

In addition to the trio of frozen feline carcasses, police seized the skeleton of a wild animal believed to be a lion and around five kilograms of wildlife bones.

Senior Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Viet Nhi of the provincial environmental police said this was the biggest case of frozen wildlife ever to rock the region. He said police will continue to investigate the matter.

RECENT WILDLIFE
SMUGGLING CASES

From April 14 to May 19 in 2010: Seven young bears were seized in three separate cases in Dien Bien, Ha Tinh and Nghe An provinces. All three cases involved smuggling from Laos to Vietnam.

From April 29 to May 28 in 2010: Hai Phong City customs officials busted four smuggling cases. They confiscated around 4.7 tons of elephant tusks in total.

March 2010: Lao Bao Border Guards in the north-central Ha Tinh Province seized the body of a 95-kilogram tiger and a 27- kilogram black panther being transported across the border to be sold in Vietnam.

October 2009: Vietnam Environmental Police seized two frozen tiger carcasses weighing a total of 130kg and arrested five suspects in Hanoi.

(Source: Education for Nature – Vietnam)

Several conservationists have said that Thoan is not the first “wildlife farmer” to be caught in the illegal trade.

ENV has taken aim at the tiger farming.

The NGO recently issued a study that found three out of seven tiger farms across Vietnam are involved in illegal tiger smuggling. Some farm owners opt not to report the number of newborn and dead tigers so they may trade them on the black market, it said.

“Tiger farming in Vietnam should be banned. Only licensed zoos and qualified and strategically planned tiger conservation facilities should be permitted to keep tigers,” ENV’s Douglas Hendrie told Thanh Nien Weekly.

“Most tiger farmers in Vietnam would be better named ‘tiger businessmen’ because they are hardly farmers like the public thinks, but rich businessmen, most of which have purchased their tigers illegally, and nearly all of which are suspected or confirmed to be illegally selling tigers out the back door of their farms, while crying to the public that they are only trying to help save tigers by breeding them for conservation,” he said.

Rhino smuggling

Though tiger numbers in Vietnam are dwindling, rhinos have been forced to the brink of extinction. This April, the carcass of a Javan rhino was found hornless and bullet-ridden in the forest in the Central Highlands Lam Dong Province.

Biologists are still trying to determine whether the corpse represents the last of its kind in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the thirst for rhino horns prevails.

On March 29, South African authorities seized a Vietnamese national named Xuan Hoang at O.R. Tambo International Airport. Of the seven rhino horns found in Hoang’s possession, several matched the DNA of a rhino that had been poached just a few days earlier.

The horns weighed 16 kilograms, and were valued at approximately US$117,000 according to a press release issued by South Africa-based NGO Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT).

The South Africans hit the Vietnamese trader hard.

According to the EWT’s press release, Hoang pleaded for mercy and tried to convince the court to levy a fine for his crimes. Magistrate Prince Manyathi responded by saying that fines would no longer suffice as a measure of discouraging future such crimes.

On June 30, the magistrate sentenced Hong to ten years in prison for possessing the horns. “A message needs to be sent to Vietnam,” he said.

Last week, three Vietnamese citizens applied for bail in South Africa. The trio were arrested on the opening night of World Cup 2010 on June 11 with a total of 25 rhino horns, EWT told Thanh Nien Weekly via email. Their court case is due later in July.

“[Hoang’s] sentence will be setting a norm in the courts for future sentencing of similar cases and will hopefully be a deterring factor to the poaching. It is very significant that such a large number of horns get smuggled out of South Africa into Vietnam undetected and it is our aim to see that better detection of such horns becomes the thing of the future,” said Faan Coetzee, Executant of EWT’s Rhino Security Project.

Regulations on the trade and processing of dog meat have been awaiting government action for over a year, according to a Ho Chi Minh City animal health official.

In the meantime, the popular food item continues to pose grave public health risks.

“We are not encouraging dog meat consumption but we need regulations to ensure food safety for the current situation [dog meat demand],” Phan Xuan Thao, head of HCMC Animal Health Agency, told Thanh Nien Weekly on July 19.

A survey conducted last year by Thao’s agency identified around 175 restaurants and eateries in HCMC that served dog meat daily. At that time, the agency found up to 350 dogs were being slaughtered per day to meet city demand.

Early last year, the city’s Animal Health Agency produced draft regulations that would require strict inspections of dog processing - from the farming to the slaughtering of the animals. According to Thao, the regulations also contained stipulations on the trade of the meat.

“[Dogs killed for human consumption] must have a clear origin,” Thao said. “They must be vaccinated against rabies and other diseases and quarantined 15 days before being slaughtered,” he said.

While the regulations await action from central authorities, the industry remains largely unregulated.

In Vietnam, dog meat has long been considered a tasty drinking food with traditional health properties. A study conducted by a Thai researcher from

Chulalonkorn University estimated that as many as 30,000 dogs are trafficked from Thailand to Vietnam every month along a single road.

At the moment, Vietnamese laws only require that dogs slaughtered for consumption have a certificate of origin and proof of rabies vaccination.

However, a 2007 study by the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology showed that 20 percent of sick dogs tested in Hanoi area slaughterhouses tested positive for rabies.

Meanwhile, the city’s enforcement wing bears a heavy load.

Thao and his officials are only permitted to inspect vaccination certificates.

Inspectors at the year-old HCMC Food Safety Agency have the authority to seize dog meat from slaughterhouses and restaurants if the owners fail to produce certificates of origin. Officials from the Food Safety Agency declined to comment on their capacity or status.

Thao said the fledgling force is restructuring to more effectively enforce existing regulations.

The trafficking of Thai dogs into Vietnam appears to be a growing problem for the country, as demand for dog continues to rise. Last year, the Global Post reported that “Hanoi’s leftover Thai dogs were once re-sold in China, according to researcher Thanyathip Sipana, but now Vietnamese consumption leaves little for the Chinese.”

Meanwhile, at home, the thriving trade in the meat is only occasionally stymied by health raids which are usually prompted by outbreaks of communicable disease.

Early this month, officials from the Hanoi Department of Health closed dozens of dog restaurants and slaughterhouses in Hoai Duc and Ha Dong districts after samples of dog meat tested positive for cholera.

In response to last year’s demand for controls, the city Agriculture Department instructed HCMC’s Animal Health Agency to draft regulations on dog meat trading. The draft proposal has been submitted to the central Department of Animal Health twice in the last year and the issue continues to be batted around like a hot potato.

In February 2009, the central Department of Animal Health declined to enact national regulations on the trade, thus shifting the onus of approving the regulations back onto the HCMC People’s Committee – the city’s municipal administration.

Seven months later, in September 2009, city officials asked Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to issue nationwide regulations on trading and slaughtering dogs. The problem is too large to be managed by city officials, they intimated. This time, city officials recommended that the ministry consider limiting or banning dog meat altogether.

The ministry told Thanh Nien Weekly that they have re-submitted the request to the central Department of Animal Health – the very organization that declined to establish national regulations in the first place.

Thao says that the city has not received any feedback from the ministry so far and that an outright ban on dog meat would be unfeasible due to existing demand. He further indicated that such a ban could exacerbate smuggling, thus complicating the prospect of effective food safety management.

“I think the ministry and department [of animal health] were afraid that [a decision] would draw opposition from international organizations for human health and animal protection,” he said.

Indeed, one such organization has publicly taken credit for defeating the measure.

Animals Asia Foundation (AAF), an international nonprofit organization, claims to have been instrumental in the central government’s decision not to enact the regulations.

AAF’s website claims that the Vietnamese government solicited their opinion in February of 2009 on a plan to extend existing standards for the slaughter of “cattle, pigs and chickens” to dogs. After writing an opinion denouncing the measure, they claim, the government relented.

“Vietnam Central Department of Animal Health (DAH) issued an official directive stating that they would not enact legislation designed to regulate the processing of dog meat for human consumption,” AAF stated in a release posted on their website.

The release quotes the organization’s Vietnam Director, Tuan Bendixsen, as saying that individual localities can still attempt to enact their own regulations. “Usually they will not go against the Central Government"s directive,” he says in the release. “I"m now looking at getting the Central Government to officially ban it [dog eating] instead of just not enacting regulation.”

Festivals should be interactive and engage their communities in their planning, ambassador to Vietnam, Mitsuo Sakaba, told Thanh Nien Weekly as he spoke about the festivities being held to mark the 1000th anniversary of Thang Long on October 10.

Thanh Nien Weekly: Vietnam will celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi in October. How should Hanoi organize the event?

Mitsuo Sakaba: A street march with the participation of 1,000 people in the costumes of the Ly Dynasty, 1,000 years ago, would be a good idea. The march led by a famous actor and actress portraying King Ly Thai To and his queen may be interesting.

To lure many visitors, the event must be big.

The organization board should coordinate with travel agents to promote the event. It is scheduled to start in October, but the detailed agenda has not yet been announced. Vietnam should announce the schedule soon, so that there is time to promote the event abroad.

To attract the participation of local youth, the event should have a history contest. Students from all high schools nationwide could participate in the Thang Long history contest. The two best teams will compete in the final round of the contest on the anniversary day. The contest will make high school students more interested in the event and the history of Thang Long. Vietnamese youths are now not so interested in Vietnam’s history.

The organizing board must coordinate with media agencies to promote the event

What’s the difference between festivals in Vietnam and Japan?

In Vietnam, people’s committees of localities often preside over festivals. Meanwhile, in Japan, people’s organizations, with the assistance of the government, hold festivals. In Japan, festival expenditures are funded only partially by local people’s committees while they are also financed by firms and individuals.

In Vietnam, if people’s committees of localities are in charge of holding festivals, people don’t have to care about expenses, about sponsors. But there are problems that could arise in holding Japanese-style festivals, and people have to solve many issues.

If people do not volunteer to plan, organize and participate in the festival, it will be difficult to hold it.

In Vietnam, residents often watch festivals, they do not directly partake in them. What should Hanoi do so that people can participate in the upcoming 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long in an active manner?

Vietnam should hold festival programs that residents can participate in. In Japan, groups of local people, not the government, hold festivals. The events are organized around participatory activities. Local residents can register to participate in the programs. Festivals in Japan often have street marches, in which people can perform traditional dances, or martial arts.

Festivals in Japan are cheerful, but they are time-consuming and difficult to prepare. It is simpler to organize festivals in the Vietnamese style, and the preparation time is also shorter.

In Vietnam, historical events are often re-enacted by actors and actresses on the stage. Is the situation in Japan the same?

Japan has two kinds of festivals, annual festivals and great festivals. There are three great festivals which lure 1-2 million of visitors each. One great festival will be held this year to celebrate the 1,300th anniversary of Nara, the ancient capital of Japan.

During some festivals in Japan, residents wear costumes of the historical period, and stage recreations of famous events in history. There is almost no usage of stages, actors and actresses, and stage directors in doing this.

This spring, I visited a festival in Bac Ninh (of Vietnam), in which more than 3,000 young people staged creations of historical events. The participation of volunteers have made the festival is very cheerful and interesting.

However, it takes a lot of time and effort to prepare for a festival with the participation of many people. In Japan, volunteers prepare for their festivals for six months. So, the problem is finding enough volunteers to prepare events for such long periods of time.

Many local and foreign visitors will rush to Hanoi during the upcoming festival of the city. So, what should Hanoi do to deal with environmental and transport issues?

When Japan holds street marches during festivals, we have to take measures to limit traffic in streets, such as banning cars and some other vehicles, so that people can comfortably partake in the events. After festivals, a lot of waste needs to be cleaned up. In Japan, the streets are cleaned up after festivals by groups of volunteers.

If Vietnam had such groups, you could deal with the environmental issue. In addition, it is necessary to improve the awareness of local people about environmental hygiene, as many people just litter all the time.

What are Japan’s contributions to the event of Vietnam?

We issued a publication of “Hanoi-Japan, towards a new vision”, and will hold a series of cultural and art events, such as a film festival, music performance and exhibitions of pictures and photos, to welcome the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long.

Proposed increase in prices of medical services can be too much or too little, depending on who’s paying, but affordable healthcare remains out of reach for Vietnam’s impoverished

Two patients at Nguyen Trai Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 5. Many poor patients are concerned by a government plan to increase hospital fees.

Nguyen Thi Ha is slightly apprehensive as she enters the cashier’s booth, bill in hand, at the Hospital of Lung Diseases and Pneumonia in Hanoi.

The bill, for more than VND5 million (US$260), has been incurred for the treatment of her husband Nguyen Van Thong, who is suffering from tuberculosis. This does not include other daily expenses incurred staying away from home in Hanoi’s Thuong Tin District.

For a poor farming family from Thuong Tin District, this is an astronomical sum, and this is true for millions of other families in a country with a per capita income of about $1,000 and where the minimum government salary is VND730,000 ($38) per month.

A simple question about the bill has tears flowing down from Ha’s swollen eyelids. “It is really difficult for us to pay for the treatment,” she says.

Ha and her 40-year-old husband earn less than VND5 million per each rice season [three-four months] as farmers.

It is not uncommon in Vietnam’s rural areas for a family member’s illness [and subsequent death, in many instances] to plunge the household so deep in debt that they have to sell the only source of livelihood they have – their land.

Later, they subsist on hiring out their labor in surrounding areas or neighboring cities, forcing children to give up their education or parents to leave their children behind with relatives to work in cities to pay off their debt.

In fact, several NGO reports have noted that illness, accompanied by the lack of affordable healthcare, is one of the most common reasons for people to fall into poverty.

This dismal state of affairs could get worse for Thong and other patients nationwide who would have to spend a lot more on hospital fees if and when a draft document on the issue jointly prepared by the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Finance takes effect.

The document proposes increases in hospital fees that are up to ten times more than current rates, but policymakers argue that these increases are nominal, adjusted for inflation.

Nguyen Thi Xuyen, deputy minister of Health, said the 1995 document on hospital fees that is in use now was unsuitable because it stipulates examining fees of between VND3,000 and VND5,000 and hospital beds at just VND10,000 a day.

She said the proposed fees were between VND10,000 and VND30,000 for examinations and between VND50,000 and VND100,000 per day for a hospital bed.

Such an increase would not affect many patients because up to 62 percent of Vietnamese citizens have health insurance, Xuyen said. The poor are supported with health insurance fees while others will be able to pay all their fees, she added.

The family of Ha and Thong do not qualify for any health insurance assistance.

About 49.5 million people, or 56.6 percent of the total population had health insurance by the end of last year, according to the Vietnam Social Insurance – the central agency in charge of managing social and health insurance.

Groundless factors

Pham Luong Son, head of Vietnam Health Insurance’s policy division, was not convinced about the rationale for the increase.

“There should be a clear and reasonable foundation for the increase in hospital fees. I think the draft was not based on enough technical data for such an increase,” Son was cited by the Tuoi Tre newspaper as saying on July 18.

According to Son, drafters had proposed medical examination fees of VND30,000 per person because they estimated that there are about 20 patients being examined a day and the daily cost for an examining room is VND600,000.

This is not the situation in Vietnam’s hospitals, where around 50 patients are being examined in each examining room every day, he said.

Son also said the proposed hospital bed price of between VND100,000 and VND180,000 per day was also not feasible. Most hospitals would not be able to supply such services that require actual hospital beds and facilities like televisions, while hospitals at present have simple beds that are sometimes shared by two or three patients because of overcrowding.

Better service?

A recent editorial in the Tuoi Tre newspaper said the draft document on hospital fees should have included a plan to improve medical facilities and services that are overloaded and fail to meet demand.

“The number of patients sharing beds remains high, even three or four patients sharing a bed in some cases and the current solution is shortening the treatment period for inpatients,” the paper said.

“Following an increase in hospital fees, patients should be supplied with minimum services like giving each patient a bed of her/his own and each doctor examining a maximum of 30 patients a day. But with the current demand, such simple requirements cannot be satisfied,” it added.

Local media have many times reported constant overloading at many hospitals where each doctor has to examine some 100 patients a day and doesn’t have enough time to conduct thorough examinations and offer detailed consulting services to the patients.

According to a report by the Ministry of Health about state-run hospitals, only 38 percent have nutritional departments and 51 percent have their own kitchens while 16 percent lack conditions to provide round-the-clock care for seriously ill patients.

Insurance fees follow suit

Facing a hike in reimbursement of hospital fees for patients with health insurance, the central insurance agency is looking to significantly increase insurance premiums.

Nguyen Minh Thao, deputy director of Vietnam Social Insurance, said they would increase health insurance fees by 40 percent once the draft regulations on hospital fees are approved. The current health insurance fee is VND450,000 per year.

However, Thao also said that Vietnam Social Insurance would suggest that the government supports policyholders with the surplus amount that can be taken from current subsidies granted to public hospitals.

Life and death

According to Vietnam Social Insurance, the 62 percent of patients having health insurance are mostly civil servants, workers and retired workers. People who don’t have health insurance are those who don’t have stable incomes, like households living near the poverty line, daily-wage laborers and farmers.

In April, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs had said the number of poor families in Vietnam will increase to between 17 to 22 percent if the new poverty lines are approved and take effect from next year. The ministry has submitted a proposal to the government to define poverty at a monthly average income of VND300,000 ($13.2) per person in rural areas and VND600,000 ($31.6) in urban areas. Another option is to set the threshold at VND480,000 ($25.3) and VND700,000 ($36.9), respectively.

While it is clear that an increase in hospital fees would affect those without health insurance, policyholders would also suffer.

Under the Health Insurance Law taking effect in July 2009, poor patients have to pay five percent of hospital fees, and the rest is reimbursed by the health insurance agency. Having to pay five percent will also hit many families hard, and can mean the difference between life and death.

Truong Thi Ngoc of An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta says the health insurance agency used to pay in full the hospital fees for the treatment of her six-year-old son at the HCMC Tumor Hospital. Her son suffers from leukemia, or blood cancer. With the new policy, they have to pay a portion of the costs. Ngoc and her husband have had to leave their rice fields in the Mekong Delta to work for daily wages as construction workers in HCMC to take care of their child.

“We have to borrow more money to pay for each of his treatment periods. But we can’t afford it if the hospital fees increase. Maybe we will have to take him back home to An Giang then.”

 Marc Moynot, 66, in his HCMC chocolate lab in Tan Binh District

Marc Moynot, 66, stands in the garden of the French General Consulate during a Bastille Day celebration.

The little old man’s soft, gentle face seems to disappear behind his trove of handmade chocolates. They are white and black, milky and dark. Some have the yielding texture of truffles. Others feature firm shells that burst open to yield tropical bonanzas: passion fruit jam, orange peel marmalade and kumquat liqueur.

Cinnamon and other piquant spices swirl through the buttery softness of these little marvels and a je ne sais quoi that is distinctly Vietnamese.

The following day, I decided to trek out to the small workshop he shares with his Vietnamese partner and her two children out in Ho Chi Minh City’s sprawling Tan Binh District.

The intoxicating aroma of 50 kilos of chocolate almost knocks me out as I step through the door of 27 Nguyen Van Mai Street – Moynot’s home and the headquarters of Astair Chocolates private company. The ground floor of the private home features Moynot’s neat laboratory. Shelf after shelf of pots and trays line the walls. The slight man slinks along a long stainless steel table and goes to work.

Moynot’s production team consists solely of his partner, Nguyen Thi Mai Huong, her two children and a maid. Together, the crew is endlessly experimenting with new fillings based on distinctly Vietnamese flavors - white honey from Da Lat, kumquat, mango, peppercorns.

The nose knows

Laurent Severac has made a living scouring Vietnam for thrilling smells. For the past 16 years, the stout Frenchman has tromped through the nation’s forests in search of seeds, leaves and aromatic woods that delight the senses. He makes his livelihood distilling his finds into essential oils and selling them to Western perfume designers.

For this olfactory epicure, Moynot’s chocolate is sui generis.

Last year, Severac ordered around 200 boxes of kumquat chocolates to give to friends and clients for the Lunar New Year. “Marc’s chocolate surprises me most with its purity and simplicity,” Severac said. “I’ve been in Asia for 22 years. Every time I come home, my father asks me to bring him two things: Tiger Balm and Astair chocolates.”

When Severac tries to slip a French-made truffle to his staff in Hanoi, they turn up their noses.

“I prefer chocolates from your friend in Saigon,” they say.

Moynot has agreed to customize chocolates to suit Severac’s thirst for Vietnamese flavors. In his small lab, he’s whipped up fillings derived from ingredients harvested in the mountains of the north: star anise, wild pepper, and wild ginger – to name just a few. “They are simply the best I’ve eaten in my life,” Severac said.

Moynot B.C. (before chocolate)

The master candy man once made his living as an Apline guide, leading ski trips, forays and search parties into the mountains in Savoir, France. He was busiest during the snow-packed four- month winter season. The rest of the year was slow and Moynot got by on taking tourists hiking and camping.

In 1993, he decided to visit Vietnam on a one-month holiday.

After returning to France, he was determined to change his life. In 1995, he moved to HCMC and took a teaching job. He didn’t care much for the work and toyed with the idea of becoming a water sports instructor in Mui Ne. During the transition, Moynot’s friend, a successful HCMC caterer tried his two standby dessert recipes: chocolate mousse and dark chocolate truffles.

His friend was blown away.

“I had these two recipes when I was in France,” Moynot says. “I learned them from a box of chocolate.”

The apprentice

Moynot’s caterer friend helped him import ingredients and supplies from France. Seeking further guidance, Moynot approached Serge Rigaredin, the former head chef of Sofitel Saigon Hotel, to learn more chocolate recipes. (Rigaredin has since returned to France and could not be reached for this article).

The budding chocolatier felt very lucky at the time. “Serge Rigaredin was a very kind, skillful and devoted teacher,” said Moynot. “He also loaned me several good books.”

In 2001, the standard for chocolate was fairly low in southern Vietnam; Moynot worked hard to change that.

Around the same time, he met his partner in Da Lat. Soon after the meeting, the two began making chocolate together. Huong said that it was difficult to enter the field at the time. Step by step, she added, things became easier.

After a few months their chocolates were being served at some of the finest restaurants and hotels in HCMC.

A tiny, happy empire

After nine years, Moynot’s empire is confined solely to the four walls of his little lab.

He has played a role in every aspect of his operation. He sketched out a design for the heated cauldron he uses to mix the chocolate and built the device he uses to cut wrapping paper.

His major problem has been marketing. “When I started I had very little money for marketing but I am conscious that we need a marketing team for our chocolate,” he said. “Many of the hotels in HCMC make their own chocolate these days.”

Moynot still takes orders from luxury hotels, but he’s on the lookout for new customers across Vietnam. Though he sometimes finds himself pining for the quiet of the Alpine forests, he remains a satisfied man in busy HCMC.

“I have a happy family here and I make something that other people like,” he said.

The history of Vietnam-US relations is still crazy (after all these years)

Former US President Bill Clinton is greeted on the street in Hanoi, Vietnam on Wednesday, December 2006

In the days following the liberation of Saigon, Nayan Chanda, the young Saigon correspondent for the Far East Economic Review, thought he had a scoop.

He went to the man he hoped would be his source: the editor in chief of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s Nhan Dan (The People) newspaper, Hoang Tung.

“I said I know that a lot of official US documents were left behind in Saigon, which your government now has in its possession. Would you help me get access to these documents?” Chanda told Thanh Nien Weekly via phone.

Tung’s answer was no.

“I was surprised,” said Chanda. “He [Tung] said: ‘Look, the war is over, there is no reason to throw salt in the American wounds.”

According to Chanda’s history of postwar Indochina Brother Enemy: The War after the War, American banks and oil companies were invited to Hanoi as early as 1976 to explore possibilities of trade and financial relations. “They [the Vietnamese government] wanted to seek everyone’s help. It was this [US-imposed] embargo that prevented western countries from helping Vietnam,” he said in the interview.

This July 11 marks 15 years since the US decided to open its doors and lift the embargo.

Warren Christopher, US Deputy Secretary of State 1977-1981 and Secretary of State 1993-1997 (during normalization) wrote to Thanh Nien Weekly via email:

“In 1995, with the war almost two decades behind us, I believed that the time had come to establish a working relationship with Vietnam, to recast the word in the American consciousness as a place rather than a war.”

What took so long?

After the fall of Saigon, Vietnam was invaded by the Khmer Rouge several times. Vietnamese-led forces then crossed into Cambodia and ousted Pol Pot in 1978, ending a genocide that had killed two million Cambodians.

The US was not pleased. In 1981, US Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said the US would not recognize Vietnam because of its actions against Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Edwin A Martini, author of Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975-2000 and Associate Professor of History at Western Michigan University, told Thanh Nien Weekly what the US was up to in Cambodia at the time:

“The US was providing all these supplies and materials to what they called the ‘non-communist resistance’ when everybody knew full well that most of those supplies and most of those materials were going to the Khmer Rouge.”

This relationship made normalization seem virtually impossible for the Vietnamese.

“After the war, the US led a coalition of nations to establish a political blockade and economic embargo on Vietnam, preventing Vietnam’s development of regional and international relations,” recalled vice chair of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee Ngo Quang Xuan, who served as Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations during the normalization process.

Martini added that even ostensibly non-political organization like the IMF and World Bank, whom Vietnam had invited into the country post-1975, were under the influence of the US and couldn’t work here under the embargo.

But now, with Vietnam a World Trade Organization member and major trading partner with the US, Xuan considers the large economic gap between the two nations to be their greatest challenge.

However, even given the richness of the friendship, Xuan still felt relations were not yet “comprehensive.”

“I believe that US-Vietnam relations will only be comprehensive once the Agent Orange matter has been resolved.”

Flying high

In a press conference on June 29, US ambassador Michael Michalak announced the winner of the anniversary logo contest: a soaring kite, made up of the two nation’s flags.

Michalak went on to describe the various millions of dollars the US government has invested in Vietnam since the end of the embargo: including $46 million that had been donated since 1989 to help the disabled.

“I feel very strongly that relations between the US and Vietnam have never been stronger,” he said in his closing remarks.

‘Propaganda’ no more

Seated at her District 1 office in confident repose, Madame Ton Nu Thi Ninh, retired diplomat and former vice chair of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, seems comfortable in the light of Vietnam’s bright future. She plans to open a major new private university and is always happy to speak with the press.

Though she holds no grudges, Ninh remembers the harshness of the embargo with great clarity.

The stateswoman told Thanh Nien Weekly that a high-ranking UNICEF official had explained to her that even for a multilateral body, normal relations with the US were an important prerequisite for serious cooperation.

She considers Agent Orange the only problem between the two nations. “But AO will never capsize the boat,” she said.

To illustrate how far the two nations had come, Ninh recalled that years ago, a former US ambassador had dismissed Vietnam’s Agent Orange toll as “propaganda.”

“No US ambassador will use that word anymore,” she said.

Encouragement

Nguyen Duc is perhaps Agent Orange’s most famous victim.

He was joined at the leg, from birth, to his brother Viet – who remained bedridden following their 14-hour separation surgery.

Viet never fully recovered following the operation. He died in 2007.

Now, Duc walks with one leg.

He is married and living in a home made possible by international donations and the salary he earns as a computer technician.

He was just a child when relations normalized. “Over the past 15 years, I have seen remarkable progress in the relations between the two countries,” he said over the phone. He was encouraged by the recent arrival of four US Senators willing to discuss dioxin cleanup and hopes that the Vietnamese government will continue to lean on the US for a resolution to the Agent Orange problem.

“If I had a chance to speak with the US leaders, I would tell them to stop all other wars waged elsewhere in the world,” he said.

Freedom fighter

Nguyen Kim Phuong, 80, fought in the guerilla resistance movement against both the French and Americans. His father was killed by the French and his father-in-law was confined at Con Dao prison, notorious for its infamous “tiger cages.”

Like most Vietnamese, Phuong is forgiving about the war and is happy to see US-Vietnam relations moving forward.

“Since normalization, the lives of our people and our economy have both improved. Our relations are mutually beneficial. The Vietnamese people are grateful to the generous support from the US,” Phuong said.

“But... history cannot be forgotten.”

South Korean authorities have pledged to make Korean men looking to marry foreign women undergo a cultural education program after a Vietnamese woman was allegedly killed by her husband in Busan.

“Those with a history of mental illness or a violent crime record and those who have married and divorced foreign brides three times or more will face restrictions on applying for visas for their would-be brides,” Moon Soo-Yong, a ministry deputy director, told AFP.

The move came after 20-year-old Thach Thi Hoang Ngoc was stabbed to death by her South Korean husband, Jang Do Hyo, who had a history of mental problems, on July 8, just eight days after arriving in South Korea to live with her new husband, according to the Korea Times, which cited reports from the Busan Saha Police Station.

Ngoc was beaten and stabbed to death in her house in Busan after quarreling with her 47- year-old husband, the Korea Times said, adding that the husband told police that he had been instructed by a ghost to kill her during a fight the couple was having.

Make me a match

Statistics from the South Korean Consulate General in HCMC show that around 27,500 Vietnamese women had been granted marriage visas by 2008 and around 8,000 such visas were granted in 2009 alone. This means around 35,500 Vietnamese women had migrated to South Korea for marriage by the end of 2009.

Many of these marriages were arranged by illegal brokers, who put women up on show at human supermarkets.

In a famous case, Ho Chi Minh City police arrested a man caught displaying 65 Vietnamese girls to two prospective South Korean grooms in an allegedly illegal marriage brokerage scam in 2007.

Following many such cases, the International Organization for Migration (IMO) and the South Korean government collaborated to set up a website, www.vovietchonghan.org, on Vietnamese and Korean customs laws and how they affect cross-cultural marriages.

Police requested an arrest warrant for Jang on murder charges July 9, the paper said, adding that investigators were now questioning the husband about the brutal beating and stabbing.

Ngoc married Jang without knowing he had undergone psychiatric treatment for depression and mental illness 57 times since 2005, South Korean media reported.

Ngoc’s parents, Thach Sang and his wife Truong Thi Ut, were informed of the death on July 9.

Ut told Thanh Nien Ngoc had met Jang, her husband, on February 7 via a brokerage firm, whose name has not been released. She said the wedding was held ten days later in Ho Chi Minh City.

Before the wedding, Jang’s family gave Ngoc’s family VND3.8 million (US$199) and rented a car to bring her family to HCMC.

Broken dreams

Ngoc’s family comes from Thoi Hoa B Hamlet in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho’s Co Do District, where they live with 300 other ethnic Khmer families. Most of them are poor and many in the Mekong Delta area have seen their daughters marry husbands from Taiwan and South Korea in recent years.

But several cases of Delta women marrying foreign men through brokerage services have ended in tragedy.

In 2008, Tran Thanh Lan, 22, of Hau Giang Province reportedly committed suicide in Kyongsan City just 25 days after she went to South Korea with her husband Ha Jang Su, whom she had been married to for six months.

Vietnamese media reports said she had become depressed after failing to integrate into the new society. The reports also said there were suspicious circumstances surrounding her death, pointing out that she had requested to get divorced a week earlier and that her husband had already bought her a ticket home.

In 2007, Le Thi Kim Dong of Can Tho died while allegedly attempting to escape from her husband’s house in Daegu Town, some 400 kilometers from Seoul. The pregnant woman had allegedly suffered maltreatment at the hands of her husband’s family, Vietnamese media reports said.

Emotional arbiter

In upholding the 12-year murder conviction of Huynh Mai’s husband – known only as Jang – chief justice at the Daejeon City trial Kim Sang-jun said he hoped the incident would not give Vietnamese people a poor image of South Korea, according to the local Hankyoreh newspaper.

The paper quoted him as saying: “We [the South Korean people] should cordially and sadly confess the brutality hidden in our hearts.”

“No one told Jang who his bride would be nor what her expectations would be and Jang himself did not make any effort to find out... We cannot blame Jang alone. This is something that was caused by the immaturity in our society, by which foreign women are regarded as objects that can be imported.”

“We wanted to seek forgiveness from the victim’s family for the brutality in our society. It is regrettable that we’ve had to make the ruling without informing her family.”

Workers build a ship for delivery later this year at a Vinashin shipyard in the central province of Quang Ngai. The government has decided to restructure the state-owned shipbuilder, whose debts totaled more than US$4 billion.

Loss-making shipbuilding giant Vinashin has admitted its massive expansion efforts over the past few years had been overconfident and had led to the “necessary” restructuring it is now undergoing.

“We want to apologize to the Party, the government, the public and everyone who put their faith in Vinashin,” CEO Tran Quang Vu said in a series of reports published by Tien Phong newspaper last weekend. “We have failed to live up to expectations.”

As shipbuilding is a comprehensive industry, comprising many other sectors like steel, machinery and paint, Vinashin had created “an ambitious plan” to build a well-rounded business in order to control quality and cut production costs, said Vu, who took the CEO position at the state-owned company on July 1.

“However, we have to admit that we became overindulgent. Besides shipbuilding, which is our core business, we also invested in stocks, real estate and insurance markets.

“Since our business was based on loans, Vinashin faced difficulties when the economic crisis hit the global market, severing the company from its financial plans.”

Vu said the company regretted being “too confident” about raising funds that never materialized.

“If we could have forecast accurately and took aggressive preemptive measures, we would not be in this situation today.”

Overhaul

The situation that Vinashin finds itself in now is indeed dire. The government said last week that the shipbuilder’s debts totaled more than VND80 trillion (US$4.2 billion).

As a result, it has to be restructured so that it can focus only on its core business, the government said. Projects that are not necessary to the company’s development will be transferred to other state-owned enterprises, like Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines).

“When we are no longer capable, it’s better to transfer our subsidiaries to other companies that still want to make investments,” Vu said.

“This is a reasonable decision and will benefit the whole economy; much better than us just holding onto them.”

But not everyone thinks that the restructuring plan is a good one. Economist Pham Chi Lan, a former advisor to the government, called it “problematic.”

“Passing parts of the debt on to other companies doesn’t make the debt go away,” she said in an interview published on Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper on Monday. “Moreover, it’s not rational for the government to continue offering loans to Vinashin while the company hasn’t made any change yet to prove their competence. The new capital flows can become new debts in the future.”

“The government has chosen the easiest rescue plan for Vinashin by passing the debt burden to the economy, other businesses and, in the end, tax payers,” she said.

‘Too lenient’

MARKET IMPACTS

Le Trong Nhi, independent financial analyst, talks with Thanh Nien Weekly about how Vinashin’s loss has impacted Vietnam’s bond and equity markets.

“Vinashin’s VND80 trillion, or US$4 billion, in losses has affected Vietnam’s bond and equity markets. State-owned Vinashin issued US$750 million with guarantees by the government. The big loss has downgraded bonds issued by state-owned businesses and the government on the international market. It will also affect bonds to be issued by the sector and other private corporations in the coming time. PetroVietnam, or National Oil and Gas Group, plans to issue bonds on the international market this year. The group was assigned to share the loss with Vinashin as the latter’s affiliates were ordered by the government to merge into the group. The affiliates have also undergone some losses. The group’s bonds will be cited as more “expensive” after the Vinashin “scandal.”

From what I know, some local banks and financial funds invested in projects introduced by Vinashin, or indirectly in those financed by Vinashin. The loss has shaken financial investors such as the banks and funds which hold listed shares in Vietnam. Some international financial funds which operate in Vietnam have faced pressure from shareholders to divest from the market. This combination will create more pressure on the stock market in the country.”

Vinashin was established in 1996 with a charter capital of VND100 billion, according to a government report. The company has made great strides over the years, turning Vietnam into one of the strongest shipbuilders in the world.

But due to the economic downturn, Vinashin faced numerous financial difficulties. Many customers canceled shipbuilding contracts or delayed payments, the government said.

Analysts have said that Vinashin’s failures created a storm of outrage among a public that had been kept almost entirely in the dark about the company’s operations.

People knew almost nothing about the state-owned company, except that it was “a major shipbuilder,” until they found out it was on the verge of bankruptcy and needs a serious overhaul. Many in fact assumed the company was strong.

Analysts said the public had the right to know about the operations of a state-owned company that uses state funds.

Like many state-owned enterprises, the shipbuilder barely disclosed its financial figures, leaving the public oblivious to what was going on, even when it incurred huge losses of billions of dollars.

The issue of ineffective business at Vinashin and other state-owned enterprises has been raised many times but concerned agencies did not pay enough attention to it, Lan said.

“I think both Vinashin and government agencies have to take responsibility. Specific individuals and agencies have to be held accountable because public funds are not charity funds,” she said.

“Censure would be too lenient a penalty for Vinashin. Legal actions should be taken against those accountable for the losses and debts at the company.”

Favor?

“The government should have let inspectors and auditors find out what Vinashin had been doing over the years, particularly as pertains to its debts, losses and excessive investments,” Lan said, noting that the state-owned company had taken advantage of preferential treatment from the government.

Inspections of several large companies, including Vinashin, were delayed last year when the government decided to give the firms more time to recover from the global economic downturn.

Lan said the lack of oversight had allowed Vinashin to always demand large land areas for its projects, which she called “a waste”.

In what other experts have called preferential treatment, the government raised $750 million by selling bonds in 2005 and then lent the proceeds to Vinashin. The company late last year won government approval to sell as much as $600 million of bonds overseas to fund construction of new ships.

The government has already rejected speculations that it showed a preference for Vinashin.

Pham Viet Muon, deputy head of the Government Office, told a press briefing last week that the government has supported the shipbuilding sector as it is one of the key industries for the country’s development.

“However, the government has not favored Vinashin. The company, like any other business, has to operate in accordance with the laws.”

Muon said while Vinashin’s business was affected by the global economic crisis, the company had its own weaknesses in financial management.

“The decision to restructure Vinashin aims at four goals: to maintain and develop the shipbuilding industry; to use resources and infrastructure effectively; to prevent negative impacts on credit institutions; and to ensure jobs for workers,” he said.

“The lesson learned is that the government has to monitor the operations of businesses closely even after they are given autonomy,” he said.

Restructuring a company or an economy is a normal task, Muon said, noting that after Vinashin, other companies will undergo reforms to improve their operations.

BAD REPORT CARD

The authorities have censured Vinashin Chairman Phan Thanh Binh for irresponsibly using state funds and pushing the company towards bankruptcy. According to the Inspection Commission of the Party’s Central Committee, Binh also appointed his family members to key positions in the company against state regulations.

These violations have caused serious consequences, inspectors said, noting that Binh may have acted out of his own self-interest.

The Inspection Commission also said Vinashin was dishonest in financial reporting and had invested aggressively beyond its major business of shipbuilding, causing losses to the government’s budget. According to a report in Tuoi Tre newspaper Wednesday, Binh was appointed CEO of Vinashin in 1996 and two years later he also took the post of the company chairman. Holding the highest authority in the company, Binh made many investment decisions which other managers and board members said they did not know of, the report said.

For instance, Binh decided on his own to buy a ship worth VND1.39 trillion (US$72.8 million) in 2007 and the purchase had not been reported to concerned ministries beforehand, the report said. Binh also appointed his son Pham Binh Minh, 30, to multiple key positions, including chairman of Vinashin Design Company and deputy general director of Vinashin’s Dung Quoc Shipyard, expected to become the largest shipyard in South East Asia.

About ten Vietnamese children continue to drown every day; concerned agencies scramble to address the crisis

A group of children play by the Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. Concerned agencies are seeking to reduce drowning rates among children in Vietnam as about ten children die of drowning every single day of the year on an average.

Two children drowned on July 11 while picking snails with their grandmother on a riverbank in the south-central Khanh Hoa Province.

Nguyen Thi Trang Nha, 14, and her younger sister, Nguyen Thi Anh Huyen, 10, fell into a deep underwater hole along the bank of the Tac River in Nha Trang’s Phuoc Dong Commune.

Neither child could swim.

The sisters’ horrible end is just a piece in a larger tragedy: about ten Vietnamese children die from drowning every single day. It is the leading cause of injury-related deaths in children and adolescents in Vietnam. Official statistics found that over 3,500 children and adolescents, aged 0-19, died from drowning nationwide in 2008.

“[Drowning] accounts for about 50 percent of injury-related mortalities among children and adolescents,” said Jean Dupraz, UNICEF Acting Representative in Vietnam, told a conference in Hanoi on July 16. The conference was aimed at building a communications campaign to battle the epidemic.

“They die close to their homes and close to their playgrounds, often left alone without adult supervision and care,” Dupraz said. “Compared to other countries in the region, Vietnam has the highest fatal drowning rate. This reflects the extent of the problem in Vietnam, which requires urgent and strong action from all of us.”

“Evidence has shown that creating a safe environment for children can help to save them from drowning,” he said.

Seeking solutions

At the conference, the leaders of 15 provinces where the problem is most acute signed a commitment to reducing child drowning cases.

The leaders pledged to raise community awareness about the urgent demand to prevent drowning deaths and call for the urgent action from families, community and local leaders to address the issue. In the meantime, representatives from the central government pledged their full support.

“The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs will cooperate with other ministries and mass organizations to guide and monitor the implementation of child drowning prevention activities in the 15 provinces with the highest rate of child drowning” said Dam Huu Dac, Deputy Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs.

“It’s important that all children and adolescents live in safe and secure environments”, he added.

Dupraz said UNICEF would continue to aid Vietnam in the prevention of child drowning.

“We will continue to work closely with the government in its efforts to protect children from injury in general and from drowning in particular”, he said.

Over the last couple of years UNICEF has continued to play its part by supporting the government of Vietnam in its efforts. Recently, they helped fund programs to teach children how to swim and perform first-aid.

The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs reported that other countries have succeeded in reducing drowning casualties by building fences, covering water jars, and stressing child supervision.

Positive examples are found in cities and provinces such as Da Nang, An Giang, Dong Thap, where due to leadership commitment, regular swimming classes are offered to children in addition to other prevention activities. The measures have helped to dramatically reduce the number of child drowning deaths in those provinces in recent years, the ministry said.