* CORRUPTION
On Monday, March 30, reports from different news agencies said that three Vietnamese corrupt officials in the state-run Textile Co. in Nam Dinh City (North Vietnam) were sentenced to life in prison and ten other defendants received lesser prison terms.
The officials were charged with graft, embezzlement, deliberate distortion of government economic management regulations and falsified documents, at the Nam Dinh Textile Co. that caused the loss of nearly $24 million in stolen funds, missing state revenue and bad debts.
Nguyen Duy Kiêm, director of the company; successor Nguyen Van Tuyên; and chief accountant Tran Ngoc Vinh were sentenced to life and each ordered to pay more than $800,000 in compensation. Ten others received prison terms ranging from 18 months to 20 years. One was given a suspended sentence. Eight defendants were ordered to pay compensation ranging from $2,300 to $23,000 to the company for graft and stolen funds.
Two senior officials from the ministries of industry and finance were sentenced to two years and 18 months, respectively.
In May, a court in Saigon sentenced four people to death for corruption in a commercial party organization.
As the articles concerning corruption in the criminal law of the Vietnamese Communist regime are vague in context, it is difficult to understand why a certain sentence is pronounced.
Corruption in Vietnam today seems to be an incurable social evil. For a long time prior to - especially after - 1975, the Communist central leadership tolerate their corrupt but faithful subordinates, and often award them with implicit permission to take bribes, in cash or in kind, including houses from those who exchange estates for exit permits.
The Vietnamese are well aware that corrupt officials always have some "connections" at the top level of the party. Usually, when the higher ends of the connections lost their power, the lower ends are exposed to the danger of prosecution.
* LONG AN PROVINCE COMMUNIST LEADERS IN TROUBLE?
As reported by Germany Press, two top Communist Party officials in the southern Long An province were suspended from their offices, according to reliable sources on Tuesday 31, 1998. They are charged with smuggling and corruption.
The central government has recently called on crackdown against smuggling which is rampant and have exacerbated the plight of inefficient state-owned enterprises, which are hemorrhaging red ink.
Hanoi appointed its Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung the crackdown campaign, which he called "a matter of life and death" for the country.
Despite the suspension order, which was conveyed verbally on Saturday, the chairman of the Long An Province People's Committee, effectively the provincial governor, was still at work Tuesday. "We haven't received any paper or document on the dismissal of these two guys and the chairman of the People's Committee is still working today," said a Long An province officials by telephone.
The two men have also been implicated in corruption involving the Long An Textile Company, a firm owned by the local government, reported The Laborer (Nguoi Lao Dong) newspaper in its latest edition.
Pham Van Tai is the committee chairman and Pham Thanh Phong has been serving as the secretary of the ruling Communist Party's provincial unit, the most powerful figure in the province.
The Long An Party Committee has been well known of its waywardness. Right after 1975, this province committee has often acted on its own. It paid the employees in full cash, while the others paid partly in kind as decreed by the central government. In the 1985 currency reform, the committee disclosed the confidential information on is radio broadcast, against the directive from Ha Noi.
Certainly, the top officials in Long An are not the favorites of the central leaders. But to overthrow the top leader of a party provincial committee is almost impossible, unless he is caught red-handed doing some serious felony.
* OPIC IN VIETNAM
We read from Los Angeles Times March 31, 1998, Tuesday: Re "Shifty Move on Labor Rights in Vietnam," International Outlook, March 25, 1998.
"Nothing better illustrates Times writer Jim Mann's point about Washington's hypocrisy in dealing with labor abroad than the juxtaposition of his story with the front-page article that day on President Clinton's trip to Africa. While Clinton was in Uganda awkwardly apologizing for America's slave trade practices of the previous centuries, his administration, through the Overseas Private Investment Corp., is rubber-stamping Vietnam's current substandard, coercive labor practices for the benefit of the big business lobby and corporations like Nike."
"It seems at first glance that OPIC is failing to do its job by ignoring the litany of complaints against Vietnam's labor standards. In reality, perhaps the best "insurance" it can provide for the success of American companies overseas is to ensure that foreign countries like Vietnam maintain a repressive hold on their labor market, allowing American companies to profit from suppressed wages and nonexistent workers rights."
"The big business interests of cotton blinded America in the past to the injustices of slavery. Are we destined to be blinded again, this time by the big business interests of athletic shoe companies to the injustices of slave labor practices abroad?"
MICHAEL G.
Santa Ana
The Vietnamese refugees community greatly appreciates the opinion of Mr. Michael G. and the Los Angeles Times.
* HUMAN RIGHTS!
From Paris on April 1, AFP reported that Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai declined an invitation to meet with representatives of the International Human Rights Federation during an official visit to Paris, the group said Wednesday.
The group which has criticized Vietnam's human rights record demanded that Hanoi give a "positive response" to its recent application for visas to investigate what it said was "alarming information" in Vietnam.
Khai is visiting France for the first time, and discussed Asia's financial turmoil and ways of increasing foreign investment during talks with President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday.
AFP also said that the UN special reporter on religious intolerance said Wednesday that Vietnam had agreed to let him visit the country. Abdelfattah Amor, of Tunisia, said no date had been set for the visit. Amor had requested entry in 1995 and Hanoi agreed to his request on Tuesday during the Human Rights Commission session which ends April 24. Amor told journalists he wanted to speak with Vietnamese authorities and suspected victims of religious intolerance.
Phan Van Khai's reaction to the invitation is nothing unusual. The Vietnamese have expected such attitude. As to the visit of Mr. Amor, it is predictable that he could do nothing great. The Vietnamese Communist leaders are the most skillful in duplicity, the wily foxes with experiences in decades of concealing the truth from outsiders.
* KHE SANH
Reuters reported Monday, March 31 that the Communist authority of Quang Tri province planned to construct a monument and other memorial projects in Khe Sanh, the US Marine base where the Allied soldiers were under siege of 75 days by the Communist forces in 1968.
Local officials are trying to complete the construction before July 9, the date Communist propaganda claims that the Allied forces withdrew from Khe Sanh. Their purpose is mainly to attract tourists and for propaganda.
The Vietnamese veterans of the Republic of Vietnam 37th Ranger Battalion who were fighting along with the Americans in Khe Sanh feel guilty of not having done anything as the Australian Vietnam veterans. The brave and honorable veterans of Australia went to Long Tan, South Vietnam to hold a ceremony commemorating their 18 dead fighting fellows who killed 250 enemies at the Long Tan plantation. Why the American government and the Pentagon wouldn't do something similar to commemorate our brave men in Khe Sanh, or Hue, or Hamburger Hill - not to offer belated surrender to the Communists?
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