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VN News (Mar. 26, 1997)
Mar 26: Second Vietnam-China passenger rail crossing to open in Apri
Mar 26: Vietnam rejects criticisms from human rights group
Mar 26: Two accused of defrauding Vietnam's biggest state bank
Mar 26: Vietnamese police launch hunt for escaped judge on drug charges
Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997
Second Vietnam-China passenger rail crossing to open in April
HANOI (AFP) - Vietnam and China will open their
second border crossing to passenger trains in April, local
reports said Wednesday.
The crossing between Vietnam's Lao Cai province and China's
southwestern Yunnan province will open to passengers on
April 18, the official Vietnam News reported. It is already
open to freight.
China and Vietnam reopened their first cross-border railway
between Guangxi and Lan Song provinces in February 1996
after an 18 year suspension.
Rail links were severed after border clashes between the
two countries sparked by Vietnam's 1979 invasion of
Cambodia, which ousted that country's Khmer Rouge regime.
Relations between the two states were normalised in 1991,
though the neighbours are currently engaged in a dispute
over oil and gas claims in the South China Sea.
Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997
Vietnam rejects criticisms from human rights group
HANOI (AFP) - The Vietnamese government Wednesday
rejected a claim from a human rights group that nearly 200
Vietnamese Buddhists were threatening to burn themselves
alive in protest at the disbanding of their organisation.
"There is absolutely no case of nearly 200 buddhists
threatening to set themselves on fire because their
organisation has been disbanded," a foreign ministry
spokesman said.
"This is not the first time the Vietnam Committee on Human
Rights has maliciously made up information to damage
Vietnam," he said.
The Paris-based committee, in a document received here last
Saturday, accused the official Vietnam Buddhist Church of
having dissolved the "Buddhist Youth Movement" at the start
of the year
The movement, which is similar to the Scouts organisation,
groups more than 300,000 young people aged between six and
18.
The committee president told the United Nations Human
Rights Commission, in its annual session in Geneva on
Friday, the Buddhists made their threat in the face of a
government campaign of religious repression.
"The government respects religious activities and creates
favourable conditions for Buddhists to practise their
religion in a healthy way under the instruction of the
(official) Vietnam Buddhist Church and conforming to
Vietnamese law," added the spokesman.
The communist regime in Hanoi, which has been in
confrontation with the Buddhist opposition since the
creation of the official church in 1981, systematically
rejects all western criticisms of the human rights
situation in Vietnam.
Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997
Two accused of defrauding Vietnam's biggest state bank
HANOI (AFP) - Ho Chi Minh City police have
accused two export company directors of defrauding the
country's largest state bank of nearly 18 million dollars,
reports said Wednesday.
"In terms of a potential banking crisis this is serious,"
said a Vietnamese businessman and part owner of a
joint-stock bank in Ho Chi Minh City.
Tang Minh Phung, director of Minh Phung Export Garment Co
Ltd and Lien Khui Thin, director general of EPCO Import
Export Company were arrested after it was discovered that
collateral used on a loan had gone missing, the Ho Chi Minh
City People's Prosecution said Tuesday.
EPCO reportedly lent commodities worth 200.4 billion dong,
(17.9 million) including silk, iron and plastic to Minh
Phung for collateral on a loan from the Bank for Foreign
Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), the Saigon Times Daily
reported.
Observers said more revelations involving larger sums were
expected in coming days.
"This has the potential to be 10 times as big as Tamexco,"
the businessman said, referring to a notorious corruption
case involving losses of 40 million dollars at a
state-owned trading company. Four people were later
condemned to death.
Documents said the two were apprehended Monday for "abusing
confidence to appropriate socialist properties," police
said.
Both companies are private concerns believed to have
defaulted on letters of credit to foreign and domestic
banks.
The EPCO case is the latest revelation of problems which
have beset the domestic banking industry.
According to one estimate there is close to one billion
dollars in deferred letters of credit, a huge amount for a
country whose total imports are expected to reach only 2.72
billion in the first quarter of this year. Minh Phung is
one of Vietnam's largest garment manufacturers with more
than 9,000 employees. Like many high flying private joint
stock companies it has diversified into property
development and import-export.
EPCO, which has trade offices in Sydney and San Francisco,
is a big exporter of fertilizer and coffee with turnover
exceeding 150 million dollars last year.
Officials at both EPCO and Minh Phung have refused to
comment.
Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997
Vietnamese police launch hunt for escaped judge on drug charges
Hanoi (dpa) - Vietnamese police have launched a nation-wide hunt for a
provincial judge who was recently caught with six kilograms of opium but
who escaped from jail, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.
Mua Nenh Thong, a district court judge in north-central Nghe An
province, escaped one hour after he was arrested feigning a headache
that required him to get some fresh air, the Tuoi Tre reported.
Thong, a member of an ethnic minority, served as a judge in Ky Son
district, an opium-growing area which lies on the border with Laos.
Ky Son lies along Highway 7 which is considered to be a main route for
traffickers bringing drugs from the Golden Triangle to Vietnamese ports
or for increasing domestic consumption.