VN News (Apr. 16, 1997)

[Vu Thanh Ca <vuca@envi.env.civil.saitama-u.ac.jp>]

April 16: A fragment of Indonesia thrives in Vietnam 
April 16: Malaysia jails Vietnamese fishermen for encroachment 
April 16: Vietnam voices satisfaction over ties with China 
April 16: Japan grants aid to Vietnam to combat polio outbreaks 
April 16: U.S.-Vietnam copyright agreement expected soon
April 16: Composer Wins Vietnam's First Copyright Suit 
April 16: Fanfare turns to failure for Vietnam boatpeople 
April 16: New US envoy to Hanoi will focus on economics and missing soldiers
April 16: Vietnam Assembly may bring highway to a halt 


A fragment of Indonesia thrives in Vietnam: A Story 

Jakarta Post

IF YOU met Mohamach Abdoula in a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City and
heard him speak Vietnamese fluently and flawlessly, it would never
occur to you that he was different from the other men there.

He has the fair complexion and the slim build of of many young men in
the bustling city.

Mohamach, however, is not a full-blooded Vietnamese. In fact,
technically he is not Vietnamese. His mother is from Vietnam but his
father is a migrant from the small Indonesian island of Bawean, north
of Madura, East Java.

Born and brought up in Ho Chi Minh City, known as Saigon at the time
of his birth, he grew up speaking the language and learnt the local
customs well.

Then, at 13, his parents sent him to Jakarta, where he went to school
and college. He graduated as a computer analyst and secured a position
at a multinational company. He was posted later to Vietnam.

Now, Mohamach is one of the success stories of the Bawean community in
Ho Chi Minh City.

Members of the community meet in their mosque after the dusk prayer to
share a meal and, sometimes, to tell a visitor the story of the
beginning of this ethnic group in Vietnam.

This tale goes back in time more than a century to the late 1870s,
when a merchant ship from Bawean sailed north in search of trade.

In Saigon, then a booming commercial centre between China and
South-east Asia, the ship dropped anchor.

While the passengers were busy selling and buying goods with other
traders, the crew wandered into town. They found they could earn
pocket money working for local landowners.

Some of the crew were recruited by the French colonial masters to look
after their horses and drive their coaches. But when the time came for
the ship to move on, these men found that they were unable to rejoin
the crew.

What had happened was that their French employers simply found them
too good to replace, and hence prevented them from leaving. Being
pragmatic and full of resilience, the men accepted their fate, married
local women and made the foreign land their second home.

Eventually, those at home in Bawean received news from their brothers
living in Saigon, exhorting them to join them, to soothe their
homesickness.

Increasing numbers of Baweans went to the southern shores of Vietnam.
Those families who remained and settled there were the forefathers of
the present community, whose members mostly speak Vietnamese.

Their Vietnamese-born imam, Imam Ali, speaks some Indonesian and has
also taught his Vietnamese wife and their three children to speak the
language. Jamila, 24, their eldest, helps her mother in their food
stall.

Like the other families, Imam Ali's family is officially stateless.
"We have problems accepting the state ideology, communism," they
explained.

Instead, the community of 500 has a close association with Indonesia.
The present Indonesian Consul-General to Vietnam, Mr Sudaryomo, and
the other Muslim consuls worship in their mosque.

The mosque, too, is evidence of this link. Built in 1880, using modest
materials such as timber and thatching, it was rebuilt in 1972, with
funding coming from Garuda Indonesian Airways.

This time, however, it was constructed using mortar and bricks, with
beautiful tiling and designs. It was then officially named Rahim
Mosque.

The late former Malaysian Prime Minister Tengku Abdul Rahman once
visited and worshipped there.

The mosque is central to community life. While there have been mixed
marriages, the Bawean community insist on the non-Bawean partners
converting to Islam.

The Vietnamese government does not appear to interfere in the Bawean
community's religious life. Even the regular azan (call for prayer),
amplified by microphones, has never been prohibited.

Apart from the occasional out-of-the-ordinary story like Mohamach
Abdoula, the Baweans in Ho Chi Minh City are mostly traders or
involved in small businesses.

In the wider picture, this small fragment from Indonesia is but a
piece of the mosaic of various ethnic groups who have settled in
Vietnam.

In Ho Chi Minh City alone, there are eight mosques serving some 5,000
Muslims from different communities. Each of these leads a normal life
while maintaining its respective culture among their semi-exclusive
community.
                 ___________________________________


Malaysia jails Vietnamese fishermen for encroachment 

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - A Malaysian court Wednesday sentenced 10
Vietnamese fishermen to six months' jail for encroaching upon
Malaysian waters and ordered their boat and equipment seized, the
Bernama news agency said.

A sessions court in Kuala Terengganu on the east coast of peninsular
Malaysia fined the skipper of the vessel, 27-year-old Phan Van Chanh,
300,000 ringgit (120,000 dollars).

He was jailed six months in default after failing to come up with the
money. His crew members, four of them in their teens, were fined
100,000 ringgit each and jailed six months in default.

A fisheries department officer said the Vietnamese fishermen, aboard a
boat numbered "KG 9415 TS," were detained after a patrol boat found
them in Malaysian waters 72 nautical miles off Kuala Terengganu last
week.
                 ___________________________________


Vietnam voices satisfaction over ties with China

HUANGSHAN, China (AFP) - Vietnamese vice foreign minister Vu Khoan
expressed satisfaction Wednesday over relations with China following
the resolution of a maritime dispute.

Khoan said after meeting his Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan in this
mountain resort in eastern China's Anhui province: "our relationship
is not so bad and it is moving ahead quite a lot in different areas."

Khoan and Tang are in the Huangshan Mountain resort for the third
Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) annual dialogue with
China which begins Thursday.

Vietnam and China held expert level meetings in Beijing last week to
resolve a potentially explosive dispute over a Chinese oil rig
deployed in an area in the Spratly islands to which both countries
have claims.

The Kantan III rig -- which was withdrawn shortly before the talks --
was drilling in a disputed zone just south of the Gulf of Tonkin,
which is almost halfway between the central Vietnamese coast and the
Chinese island of Hainan.

"The rig has been moved. We are satisfied with situation. There was no
discussion at our level. That was held at expert level," Vu Khoan
said.

He added that he reviewed some specific business in order to improve
the bilateral ties at a meeting with Tang which lasted 80 minutes.

The two officials discussed exchange of delegations, economic
cooperation, trade and scheduled meetings at expert level on land
border and on the Tonkin Gulf, Vu Khoan said.

Vietnam is a member of ASEAN which also groups Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Vietnam and China have twice run into territorial disputes, the first
time in 1974 over the Paracel Islands and again in 1988 over the
Spratlys which are also claimed in whole or in part by Brunei,
Malaysia and the Philippines.
                 ___________________________________


Japan grants aid to Vietnam to combat polio outbreaks 

Japan Economic Newswire

Hanoi -- Japan on Wednesday provided Vietnam with 82 million yen in
emergency aid for the procurement of 10 million doses of polio
vaccine, the Japanese Embassy in Hanoi said.

The embassy said the vaccines will be produced in Vietnam and
dispensed in high-risk areas in the southern part of the country,
where last year there were two confirmed outbreaks of the potentially
crippling disease.

Vietnam has vowed to eradicate polio from the country by the year
2000. To help Vietnam achieve that goal, Japan has provided it with
polio vaccines every year since 1993.

According to the World Health Organization, last year Vietnam recorded
51 confirmed cases of polio and 424 cases of acute flaccid paralysis,
or suspected polio.
                 ___________________________________


U.S.-Vietnam copyright agreement expected soon

Hanoi (Reuter) - Visiting U.S. trade negotiators said on Wednesday
they were expecting a copyright agreement with Vietnam to be concluded
within the next 24 hours.

Joseph Damond, chief negotiator with the U.S. mission, told reporters
at a news briefing that significant progress had been achieved during
talks with Vietnamese officials this week and that a result was
expected to be announced soon.

``We have made great progress on that agreement with the Vietnamese
side,'' he said. ``We are very near being able to make an announcement
on those negotiations ... There's a social event tonight ... and we
hope to put the issue to rest at that time.''

Damond said the next stage would be for the United States and Vietnam
to work out details of implementation and enforcement, but said the
existence of an accord would help in the process of work towards a
bilateral trade agreement.

He said a copyright agreement between the two countries would give
legal protection in Vietnam to American works, and described the scope
of the expected agreement as being broad.

``Basically any type of work ... software, publishing, sound
recordings, motion pictures, videos ... it's all protected,'' he said.

Hanoi and Washington normalised diplomatic ties in 1995, but progress
towards a full trade agreement has so far been slow.

Damond described the expected copyright agrement as ``a good start''
in that process, but gave no date for likely full economic
normalisation.

Vietnam is one of the world's poorest countries. Copyright piracy is
considered negligible compared to some other Asian countries, but
analysts say it is a fast-growing problem.

U.S. computer software giant Microsoft said in December that an
estimated 99 percent of that software in Vietnam was pirated, and
urged Hanoi to speed efforts to resolve the problem.

Earlier on Wednesday, a state-owned entertainment company in Ho Chi
Minh City said it had been ordered by a court to pay damages to a
songwriter in the country's first copyright lawsuit.
                 ___________________________________


Composer Wins Vietnam's First Copyright Suit

HANOI (Reuter) - A state-owned entertainment company in Ho Chi Minh
City said Tuesday it had been ordered by a court to pay damages to a
composer in Vietnam's first copyright lawsuit.

Pham Hong Cam, acting director of Saigon Video Co, said the company
had been ordered to pay 13.39 million dong ($1,150) compensation to
composer Tran Tien for illegally recording and distributing his songs.

Saigon Video produced an album featuring 10 of Tien's songs, some of
which had been slightly modified.

The company argued in court that it had not violated copyright law
because the songs had previously been widely distributed and it was
therefore not obliged to ask the composer for permission to reproduce
his work.

However, the court ordered the company to pay Tien 12 percent of its
revenues from the sale of more than 6,000 audio cassettes in
royalties.

It also ruled in favor of Tien's claim that after Saigon Video
released its album, he lost a contract with another firm which had
previously agreed to make an album of his songs.

Saigon Video was ordered to make public apologies to the composer in a
newspaper and in local television and radio broadcasts.

The protection of authorship and intellectual property is specified in
the civil code which came into effect last year.

However, videos, audio cassetes and compact discs are routinely copied
and sold in Vietnam and, according to U.S. computer giant Microsoft,
99 percent of software circulating in the country is pirated.

The United States, which is this week holding the latest in a series
of discussions in Vietnam on a trade agreement, is keen to move ahead
quickly with a separate accord on copyright.

"We wish to forestall copyright violations from increasing and
therefore becoming an obstacle to economic normalisation," Nancy Linn
Patton, deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce, told
a conference in Hanoi last week.

"We would like to work with you to put in place the preventive legal
infrastructure and enforcement mechanisms before entrenched copyright
violator interests develop," she said.
                 ___________________________________


Fanfare turns to failure for Vietnam boatpeople 

HAIPHONG (Reuter) - When Nguyen Xuan Dung, his wife and four children
stepped on to the tarmac at Hanoi airport last year, they were
showered with gifts by smiling officials and mobbed by camera-toting
journalists.

The officially designated 50,000th migrant to return voluntarily from
detention camps in Hong Kong, Dung seemed startled by the effusive
welcome.

After all, the hundreds of thousands of boatpeople who fled after the
Vietnam War ended in 1975 were castigated by the communist government
and the roughly 108,000 who have made the return journey are still
viewed with a wary eye.

Eight months later, the fanfare of that August day is just a
bitter-sweet memory for 38-year-old Dung and his wife, Nguyen Thi Xuan
Thu, as they scratch a meagre living in the northern port town of
Haiphong.

``When I first got back I wanted to commit suicide,'' says Thu as she
sits in a gloomy single room that is now home for the family of six.
``I didn't want to carry on living.''

Thu points to a step in front of their house, where she makes around
40 U.S. cents a day selling rice, and says she is ashamed of her
menial work.

``We find that people around here don't like us very much. I'm not
keen to get talking with them,'' she whispers, breaking off in silent
tears.

DREAMS OF A BETTER LIFE SHATTERED

Dung and Thu were among 30,000 Haiphong residents who, between 1985
and 1990, crowded into rickety boats and left their lives of poverty
and hardship behind them.

But the boatpeoples' dreams were shattered when they arrived in Hong
Kong, where they were incarcerated in prison-like camps and then
forgotten by the outside world.

Deemed economic migrants rather than political refugees, it was only a
matter of time before most would face the choice of voluntary or
forced repatriation. China has demanded that the 3,650 or so still in
the British colony be gone when Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule at
midnight on June 30.

Hoang Van Dinh, director of foreign affairs at the Haiphong People's
Committee, says the government promised not to punish returnees for
their ``fault'' and has kept its word.

``There is no discrimination between them and the other people,'' he
says. ``We help them to have the economic conditions to earn their
living.''

But his sympathy runs out when it comes to young returnees who are
apparently unwilling to work.

``They got used to being lazy in the camps. They don't want to work.
That is very dangerous for our society. They will be street hawkers,
beggars and hooligans,'' he says.

Dinh asserts that many return with ``social diseases'' that Vietnamese
doctors have never seen before and, with a dismissive wave of the
hand, says HIV and AIDS victims are not taken back.

UNITED NATIONS SAYS RETURNEES ARE NOT PERSECUTED

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which has eight expatriate
monitors nationwide, says it has recorded interviews with 30 percent
of the returnees and reached many more on an informal basis.

It feels satisfied that boatpeople are neither abused nor persecuted.

But just how far the authorities monitor their reintegration into a
sometimes suspicious society is less than clear.

Officials did not know where Dung was living and had to track him down
through his brother, Nguyen Xuan Hai, in a village outside town.

Hai was forcibly returned from Hong Kong after trying to escape from
the colony's once-notorious Whitehead camp. Without a profession and
without a job, 32-year-old Hai says he was considered for vocational
training in Haiphong but turned it down because it offered theory but
no practice.

Would he leave again if he could? Hai shrugs his shoulders.

FINANCIAL HEADACHES

Back in town, Dung's home is hidden away in a bustling backstreet.

The family received around $2,000 from the UNHCR and Hong Kong
authorities when their 7 1/2 years in detention came to an end. But
half of that sum was swallowed up on renovations to their poky house
and the other half was spent on buying Dung a motorbike to become a
two-wheel taxi driver.

Looking nervous and smoking a chain of cigarettes, Dung says he had to
borrow the equivalent of around $170 from a local moneylender at an
interest rate of 24 percent a year.

``I don't know how I will pay it off,'' he says, adding that he finds
it hard to make even the roughly $4.30 a day that the family needs to
make ends meet.

Financial difficulties are by no means unusual for the people of a
country which, despite the economic advances of the past decade,
remains one of the poorest in the world.

Dung and Thu say that while money is their biggest problem, in other
respects, things are going well -- the children are settling in and
the family is not harassed by the authorities.

But are they glad to be back?

``Everything I do now is for my children,'' Dung replies. ``My own
life is over now.''
                 ___________________________________


New US envoy to Hanoi will focus on economics and missing
soldiers

WASHINGTON -- The new United States ambassador to Vietnam has said
that he will start work early next month and his two top priorities
will be normalising economic ties between the two countries and
finding missing-in-action (MIA) US soldiers.

The Senate last week confirmed six-year prisoner-of-war (PoW) Douglas
Peterson as the first US envoy to Hanoi since the end of the Vietnam
War in 1975.

He will be sworn in on April 29 and plans to arrive in Hanoi on May 9.

"The MIA-PoW issue is clearly way up on my list of priorities," he
said, adding that normalising economic ties was perhaps the top issue
he would address.

He served as an US Air Force pilot in Vietnam. He was the 66th
American taken prisoner during the bitter conflict which ended in a
communist victory in 1975.

An estimated three million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000 Americans died
in the war.

He later became a business executive and served as a congressional
representative from Florida.

Asked why he would want to return as envoy to a country which held him
prisoner, he said: "I have looked at myself and my own personal
experiences, my own attributes, and I think I can be a bridge,
hopefully, across this river of pain that exists in these two
cultures."

About 2,000 US soldiers are still unaccounted for in Vietnam, more
than 20 years after the end of the war.

Mr Peterson said: "If we have no relations, we will learn nothing of
what happened to those 2,000.

"I clearly have a personal stake in this. I know a lot of these
people, and I can assure you and the American people that this issue
is not going to go away.

"I will be working at it diligently every day."

Asked whether he viewed the war as a mistake, he said: "I have not
come to a total conclusion. I think there were some things that
occurred that were useful out of that event. There are certainly
things we could have done a lot better."

Hanoi's Foreign Ministry on Monday announced that the Clinton
administration had approved Vietnam's choice of career diplomat Le Van
Bang as its first ambassador to Washington.

US diplomats in Hanoi declined to confirm the statement, which said
that approval was given on April 11. -- Reuter, AFP.
                 ___________________________________


Vietnam Assembly may bring highway to a halt 

Hanoi (SCMP) -- A compulsory labour scheme to rebuild Vietnam's Ho Chi
Minh trail could become the first project ditched by the National
Assembly.

In an unprecedented move, members have called for the right to approve
feasibility studies for the US$5 billion (HK$38.7 billion) highway.

Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet announced plans for the road in February in
a propaganda drive that invoked the war years, when millions laboured
to build jungle supply lines.

Under a compulsory labour scheme that is also being used for other
projects, most adults under 45 would donate 10 working days a year.
But those who can afford it can buy their way out.

The road would be used in addition to the dilapidated Highway One,
running the length of the country through mountains.

In unusually frank debates, National Assembly members from far
northern provinces and Ho Chi Minh City questioned the need for a new
road when the existing north-south road was already under extensive
repair with international aid.

Others warned the price tag could prove difficult to finance when
Vietnam, still one of the world's poorest countries, should be seeking
"quick profit" infrastructure projects.