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VN news (Mar 26, 1997)
Mar 26: New pig species found in Vietnam's ``lost world''
Mar 26: Remains of another U.S. Vietnam War pilot returned
Mar 26: Vietnam-Women: From Poverty to Diaster
Mar 26: Second Vietnam-China passenger rail crossing to open in April
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 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] New pig species found in Vietnam's ``lost world''
LONDON (Reuter) - A so-called lost world on the border between Vietnam
and Laos has yielded yet another new species of animal, this one a
primitive wild pig, researchers reported on Wednesday
DNA tests showed the pig, Sus bucculentus, was only distantly related
to other pigs in the region, said Colin Grove of the Australian
National University in Canberra.
Grove said the pig had been described more than 100 years ago but then
became lost to science.
A living version was never seen by scientists.
``We here report its re-discovery in the Annamite Range in Laos, an
area which is becoming famous for the discovery of new and previously
undescribed large mammals,'' Grove and his colleagues wrote in a
letter to the science journal Nature.
Grove said he found one skull from the pig in Beijing's Academia
Sinica, with century-old documentation.
``A new specimen of Sus bucculentis, a partial skull of a juvenile
male, was obtained from indigenous hunters in the Annamite Range,
Laos, in January 1995,'' he added.
They did DNA tests on muscle tissue left on the skull and found a
``remarkably'' large difference in the DNA between it and other wild
and domestic pigs in the region.
The Vu Quang area has already yielded several spectacular wildlife
finds, including the discovery in 1992 of a deer-like animal known as
the saola or Vu Quang ox, and a new freshwater fish last September.
``These conclusions underline the significance of the Annamites as a
biotically unique region where primitive taxa, long extinct elsewhere,
have been able to survive into the late 20th century,'' Groves wrote.
The Vietnamese government and environmental groups say the region's
forests are threatened by loggers. According to the World Wide Fund
for Nature, Vietnam has only 19 percent forest cover today compared to
43 percent 50 years ago.
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Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] Remains of another U.S. Vietnam War pilot returned
WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The remains of a U.S. pilot killed during an air
strike in the Vietnam War have been returned to the United States for
burial, the Defence Department said Wednesday.
It said 1st Lt. Gary Offutt was unable to eject when his F-100 Super
Sabre went into a near-vertical dive during a strafing run near Can
Tho in South Vietnam Oct. 1, 1965, according to another U.S. pilot.
Offutt's remains were recovered and later identified after joint
U.S.-Vietnamese teams investigated the crash site in 1993, 1994 and
1995. His remains were returned to his hometown, Stewartsville,
Missouri.
Offutt had been listed as unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War, the
department said. With identification of his remains, 2,127 Americans
remain unaccounted for in that war, it added.
___________________________________
Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] Vietnam-Women: From Poverty to Diaster
By Nguyen Phan Phuong
Inter Press Service
Hanoi, Mar. 26 (IPS) -- Lured by promises of well-paying jobs in the
city or overseas, impoverished Vietnamese women are being bussed from
their rural villages by sweet-talking gangs into the hands of brothel
owners in China.
Despite a police crackdown, a growing number of Vietnamese women and
girls are falling prey to criminal syndicates who smuggle them to
China as prostitutes or bonded brides.
Closed after the bloody Sino- Vietnamese border war in 1979, the
frontier with China was reopened in 1992 and has since emerged as a
major route for trade, both legal and illegal.
Last month, three people were given prison terms by a court in Lang
Son province, 170 kilometers north of Hanoi, for trafficking women.
The gang leader, Nguyen Thi Nga, was given a 14-year sentence, while
her chief aides, Luu Van Tho and Trieu Van Sinh, were sentenced to 13
years and 11 years respectively in prison by the local People's Court.
All three were also fined five million dong ($450) each for their
complicity in the syndicate, which sold six women during the course of
its one-year existence. The gang was busted last September and the
trial was held in February.
Some Vietnamese women are reported to consent to arranged marriages
with Chinese men, but most are tricked into going with promises of
good jobs in China, a local official said.
Most of the women lured by Nguyen Thi Nga were from the impoverished
northern Vinh Phuc province. They were later sold for between 2,800
and 3,500 Chinese yuan (between $300 and $380) to Chinese brokers who
in turn sold them to Chinese men.
The mafia-style organizations recruit women from the countryside with
promises of good jobs or prosperous marriages across the border. Upon
their arrival in China, however, they are handed over to
representatives of brothels or sold as wives and maids to farmers.
One syndicate was known to recruit women with offers of factory work
in Hanoi. They were trucked from the villages, only to find that at
the end of their journey, they had crossed the border in China.
At the end of December 1996, a total of 10,400 Vietnamese women had
either been sold or married off to Chinese men, according to Vietnam's
interior ministry. It is not clear how the statistics were gathered,
but the ministry said most of the women came from northern provinces
like Hai Phong area (3,354), Quang Ninh (1,301), and Lang Son (734).
At present, a total of 1,829 Vietnamese women have left their Chinese
husbands and either returned voluntarily or fled back home, bringing
with them some 200 children, officials said.
An estimated 70 million men are without wives in China, and the number
is expected to grow to 80 million by the year 2000, according to a
Vietnamese sociologist who said China's one-child policy and the
preference for sons has made the world's most populous country a
market for women.
Ideal conditions for the trade have been created by the introduction
of free market reforms, which saw the opening of the country's borders
and the emergence of a "get-rich-quick" mentality among some sections
of the population.
Particularly vulnerable are women in rural areas -- still largely
unreached by the benefits of reform -- who are desperate to escape
poverty at home.
Many of the trafficked women have had to endure beatings and complete
isolation due to their illegal status in China. According to the
Center for Family and Women's Studies in Hanoi, one woman was forced
to serve as the wife of a man and his four sons.
There are cases of women deported back to Vietnam after giving birth.
China also serves as a transit point for the transport of women to
third countries. Last year, police in the southern economic hub of Ho
Chi Minh City broke up a ring involved in trafficking young girls to
Taiwan for prostitution.
There is also a flourishing trade of women to Cambodia, which has its
origins in the early 1980s when Vietnamese troops were stationed in
Cambodia fighting the Khmer Rouge.
Analysts say that the reported volume of trafficking may only be the
tip of the iceberg and that it is difficult to determine the true
extent of the illegal trade.
They say the physical transport of the "human merchandise" is easy
amid the huge volume of trade along the Chinese frontier.
There is no central government agency assigned to look after the
problem, and local Vietnamese authorities do not have the resources to
trace all reported cases.
___________________________________
Wednesday - Mar 26, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] 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 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] 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 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] 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 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] 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.