VN news (June 11)

[Dam Son <son@fermi.phys.washington.edu>]

Vietnam on brink of widespread electricity outages
Silence in Vietnam as top party officials meet
Vietnam is moving to stem large-scale official waste
Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - June 10, 1997
More than 3,000 Vietnamese boat-people to remain in HK after handover
Vietnamese arrested for wielding knife in court
Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. wins licence for Vietnam battery plant
Vietnam eases foreign investment licencing procedures
Film Review: "Dust Of Life" - Amerasian Youth In Vietnamese Camp
Letter From Vietnam: Notes From The Underground
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Vietnam on brink of widespread electricity outages

HANOI, June 11 (Reuter) - Vietnam's state electricity monopoly said on
Wednesday that widespread power outages would hit the country within weeks
unless water levels in hydro-power dams increased. 

A senior Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) official told Reuters that while
sufficient capacity remained to supply electricity to Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh City for the time being, the situation could become critical by July. 

"Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City will continue to get power supplies in June as
they are priority areas," he said. "But if water supplies are still not
available in July, power cuts will be necessary." 

The official said EVN was using diesel generators and other machinery to
maintain supplies to most areas of the country. 

But a manager at northern Vietnam's Hoa Binh hydro-electric dam complex
said on Wednesday the plant was no longer able to operate at capacity. 

He added that water in the reservoir was just 1.3 metres above the level
at which turbines would stop. 

Northern Vietnam has experienced an unusually dry period in recent months
and summer rains, which usually begin in May, have still not arrived. 

Supplies of electricity to some remote areas were cut last week, when
temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) to a surge in
demand in northern cities. 

The EVN officials said the company planned to cut power to rural areas
first before throwing the switch off in cities. He added that the
situation was likely to impact non-vital industry. 

Power outages in Vietnam have been common for many years, due chiefly to
poor energy infrastructure and increased demands placed on the system by a
booming economy. 

Two main hydro-electric plants provide the electricity for most of
northern Vietnam, which in normal years feeds additional supplies to the
energy-hungry south. 

The government says it is aiming to establish a nuclear power industry,
but the first plants are not expected to be operating before 2010. 
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Silence in Vietnam as top party officials meet

HANOI, June 11 (Reuter) - Vietnam's top communist officials gathered
behind closed doors on Wednesday on the third day of the country's most
important political meeting so far this year, but the event was marked by
almost total outward silence. 

Official dailies announced the meeting in front-page headlines, but the
same newspapers were almost devoid of either reports or comment. The party
mouthpiece Nhan Dan carried just three paragraphs and a picture with a
caption. 

The meeting of the powerful 170-member Central Committee is the third
since last year's landmark party congress, which was seen by diplomats as
the most important political event since capitalist reforms were launched
in 1986. 

It is expected to define administrative reform and personnel policies to
bring Vietnam's communists into the 21st century. 

But it comes at what many observers see as a critical juncture for
Vietnam, where a decade of economic reforms is showing signs of grinding
to a halt amid indecision, internal politicking and concern over the
harmful side effects of a market economy. 

"They'd rather not do anything than take a decision they're not in total
agreement on," said one Western executive in Ho Chi Minh City. "A lot of
the top people don't have any background of market economy thinking." 

Political analysts have been expecting the meeting to include possible
leadership changes later this year, but so far there have been few outward
indications that this issue is being tackled. 

Vietnam's leadership consists of a collective triumvirate of prime
minister, president and party general secretary -- respectively Vo Van
Kiet, Le Duc Anh, and Do Muoi. 

Muoi turned 80 earlier this year, Anh, 76, suffered a stroke in November
and Kiet, 74, has on several occasions expressed a willingness to step
down. 

However, the periods in office of all three were effectively extended last
year by the failure of the party congress to agree at that stage on
successors. 
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Vietnam is moving to stem large-scale official waste

South China Morning Post

By Greg Torode in Hanoi

Under a new ruling Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet must approve plans for all
new office buildings worth more than US$900,000 (HK$6.9 million), the
Vietnam News reported yesterday. 

The move is the latest in a string of measures to beat official waste -
earmarked at last year's Communist Party Congress as a key threat to its
rule. 

Efforts have been made to stop cadres wasting public funds on parties,
gifts and cars but this Ministry of Finance move is the first time
building costs have been tackled. 

Five solid years of high growth have sparked a government building boom,
with swanky offices for cadres frequently taking priority over schools and
hospitals, many observers believe. 

"Corruption angers the people, but day to day it's official waste they can
see with their own eyes that makes them angry," one long-time party member
said. 

"The leaders know this but further down the chain priorities are
different. Money has been thrown out of the window on cars, air
conditioning and flash buildings." 

Annual per capita incomes have risen to US$309 but half the population is
still poverty-stricken. 
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Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - June 10, 1997 

Hanoi (VNA) - Highlights of Vietnam's daily newspapers today:

NHAN DAN:

- According to the Decision No. 3386/TTg issued on June 7 by the Prime
Minister, the cities of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Hai Phong and Da Nang and the
provinces of Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Dong Nai, Binh Duong and Quang Ninh are
authorised to issue licences for direct foreign investment projects,
excepting projects on oil and gas exploration, exploitation and services,
electricity production, seaport, airport, highways, railways, cement,
metallurgy and production of sugar, alcoholic drinks, beer and cigarette. 

QUAN DOI NHAN DAN: 

- Foreign investment projects licensed in the first five months of this
year were lower than those in the same period last year in terms of both
number of projects and investment capital. However, the number of projects
on material production, especially on heavy, light and food industries was
higher. 

HANOI MOI

- Market prices last week were generally stable nationwide. However rice
prices in the Mekong delta provinces slightly increased. 

VIETNAM NEWS: 

- State-owned office buildings worth VND10 billion (US$900,000) or more
will first have to get approval by the Prime Minister if a new proposal by
the Ministry of Finance is approved. 

The move is aimed at preventing state budget wastage, and was part of
amendments to a draft decision on state asset management, guiding the
implementation fo the law on the state budget. 
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More than 3,000 Vietnamese boat-people to remain in HK after handover

HONG KONG (AFP) - Some 3,400 Vietnamese boat-people will remain in Hong
Kong after its July 1 return to Chinese rule despite a demand by Beijing
they all leave the territory before the handover, a government official
said Wednesday. 

About 1,400 refugees and 2,000 people who entered Hong Kong illegally from
Vietnam were likely to be stranded here, Security Secretary Peter Lai told
the Legislative Council. 

China has not said what will happen to any Vietnamese remaining here after
the handover. 

The illegal immigrants, who are held in detention camps, include about 900
asylum-seekers who have been refused refugee status. Most of the 1,400
refugees are free to live and work in Hong Kong pending their resettlement
in a third country. 

However, officials say other countries are now reluctant to take them.
Hong Kong hosted more than 60,000 Vietnamese at the peak of the
boat-people exodus from Vietnam in 1990. 

Hong Kong has received more than 200,000 Vietnamese boat-people since the
communist victory there in 1975, Lai said. Of those, 143,000 were
re-settled in third countries and 68,000 repatriated. 
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Vietnamese arrested for wielding knife in court

Japan Economic Newswire,

TOKYO, June 10 - Police on Tuesday arrested a Vietnamese woman after she
pulled a knife from her bag in a Tokyo courtroom. 

Officials said Phan Thi Kim Cuc, 29, became hysterical and drew a paring
knife from her knapsack in a courtroom gallery of the Tokyo High Court
after a judge dismissed an appeal by her husband, who was convicted of
theft by a lower court. 

Cuc was subdued by court officials and handed over to police, they said.
No one was hurt. 

Cuc's husband was sentenced to one year in prison by the Maebashi District
Court in Gunma Prefecture, north of Tokyo, for stealing a total of 18
motor scooters with an accomplice. 
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Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. wins licence for Vietnam battery plant 

HANOI (AFP) - Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. has received a licence to build a
16 million dollar factory to make batteries in southern Vietnam, a company
official said on Wednesday. 

Mitsubishi is teaming up with Japan Storage Battery Co. Ltd in a wholly
foreign owned plant in Binh Duong province in southern Vietnam about 30
kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City. 

The plant will supply batteries to domestic motorcycle manufacturers as
well as to Vietnam's fledgling auto makers which are struggling to source
local parts. 

The duration of the project is 30 years. The Mitsubishi official declined
to give the ratio of ownership. 

Mitsubishi has its own 50 million dollar joint venture auto assembly joint
venture in Vietnam, and has a minority stake in a 55 million dollar tyre
factory with Yokohama Rubber Co Ltd. 
  _________________________________________________________________

Vietnam eases foreign investment licencing procedures

Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam has decentralized investment licencing procedures in
an attempt to bolster flagging foreign interest, local reports said on
Wednesday. 

Starting July 1, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City would have the authority to
approve foreign investments worth up to 10 million dollars, according to a
June 7 decision by the government, the Vietnam News reported. 

The local governments of Danang, Haiphong, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Dong Nai
province, Binh Duong Province and Quang Ninh Province would be allowed to
vet projects worth up five million dollars. 

All foreign invested projects and business cooperation contracts must be
approved by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), a labyrinthine
process which has caused widespread complaints from foreign companies. 

However, approval of projects in key sectors such as oil and gas
exploration and extraction, electricity production, as well as ports and
transportation projects must be left to the MPI. 

Investments located in industrial zones, export processing zones and
hi-tech industrial parks must also go through the MPI, as must projects
involving beer, alcohol, cigarettes, cement, sugar and metals, the paper
said. 

The eight localities authorised to vet their own projects account for more
than 82 percent of total approved foreign investment in Vietnam which
stands at about 27.9 billion dollars. 
  _________________________________________________________________

Film Review: "Dust Of Life" - Amerasian Youth In Vietnamese Camp

By STEPHEN HOLDEN 

New York Times News Service

The 13-year-old Amerasian hero of Rachid Bouchareb's engrossing adventure
film "Dust of Life" is one of those rare children whose canny, expressive
eyes convey a preternaturally advanced intelligence and wisdom. 

The child of a black U.S. serviceman and a Vietnamese woman, the boy,
named Son (Daniel Guyant), suddenly finds himself an outcast in 1975 when
U.S. troops, including his father, hastily evacuate Saigon. 

Immediately, the communist government begins rounding up stray Amerasian
children (there were some 40,000 left behind when U.S. troops departed the
country). Symbols of the corruption of the U.S. presence in Vietnam, they
are trucked off to harsh "re-education" camps deep in the jungle. Son is
persuaded to confess to having been a pickpocket, and joins a large group
of other children his age in a camp where the prisoners are blitzed with
communist propaganda and do hard labor clearing the forest. 

"Dust of Life" is a French-Algerian co-production shot mostly in Malaysia
with a cast of various Southeast Asian nationalities. For all its
political and historical associations, the movie, adapted from Duyen Anh's
autobiographical book, "Fanta Hill," is a slick hybrid of boy's adventure
film and prison escape drama, with a sentimental religious gloss. Son and
his friends, who were brought up Christian, secretly pray together and
pass around forbidden religious icons. 

The prison-camp scenes present the usual array of good guys and bad. There
is the sympathetic instructor (Eric Nguyen) who recognizes Son's
linguistic skills and provides him with writing paper for a journal. And
there is the brutal guard (Siu Lin Lam), who resents Son for being
literate and intelligent. 

The bulk of the movie follows the attempt of Son and two plucky fellow
prisoners, Bob (Gilles Chitlaphone) and Shrimp (Leon Outtrabady) to escape
by rafting down a jungle river. 

Along the way they encounter perils that range from drenching tropical
rainstorms to land mines and roving Montagnard troops. If tracked down by
their communist captors, they face a hellish imprisonment (and probable
death) in underground tiger cages. 

The handsomely photographed film conveys a pungent vision of the tropical
landscape and its harshness, heat and beauty. Yet the movie always feels
slightly unreal. The re-education camp seems lax in its discipline, and
its plotting escapees appear to have a lot of unsupervised free time. The
prisoners, most in their early and mid-teens, never relapse into childish
behavior. 

The main characters (especially Son) have the fortitude and farsightedness
of idealized Boy Scouts. Although most have reached puberty, there is no
indication of any restless hormonal stirrings. They are the noble
Amerasian equivalents of what Hollywood adolescents used to be before the
1950s: angels with dirty faces. 

PRODUCTION NOTES: 

`DUST OF LIFE'

With: Daniel Guyant (Son), Gilles Chitlaphone (Bob), Leon Outtrabady
(Shrimp), Jehan Pages (Little Hai), Siu Lin Ham (Greaser), Eric Nguyen
(One-Two), Yann Roussel (Steel Muscles) and William Low (Commander). 

Directed by Rachid Bouchareb; written (in French and Vietnamese, with
English subtitles) by Bernard Gesbert and Mr. Bouchareb, based on the
novel "Fanta Hill" by Duyen Anh; director of photography, Youcef Sahraoui;
edited by Helene Ducret; music by Safy Boutella; produced by Jean Brehat;
released by Swift. 

Running time: 87 minutes. 

Rating: This film is not rated. 
  _________________________________________________________________

Letter From Vietnam: Notes From The Underground

CU CHI - "You ready to do 50 yards?" 

There was a certain amused glint in the guide's eyes. He was clearly
hoping his large, square American guest would agree to grunt and grope
through a long, narrow stretch of pitch-black tunnel. 

"Okay," I said. "Fifty yards." 

In a second, he was gone. I got one final glimpse of the back of his
sandals as he disappeared around a bend in the cramped tunnel with his
flashlight. Then it was dark. Black dead dark. I was crouched 15 feet
underground in a Vietnamese jungle in a tunnel that now seemed about as
high and wide as a garden hose. My head, shoulders, knees and elbows
banged stupidly against the hard dirt walls as I crept forward down a hole
a Viet Cong commander once used to get from his bedroom to his breakfast
table. 

The vast tunnel network centered at Cu Chi, a village about 40 miles
northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, made the area one
of the most treacherous places for American soldiers during the Vietnam
War. 

The tunnels were an underground city: 150 miles of passages, three levels
deep into the ground, with hospitals, kitchens, barracks, camouflaged
trapdoors and secret underwater entrances bored into riverbanks. From this
complex hive, Viet Cong soldiers emerged, killed and disappeared without a
trace before the Americans knew what hit them. 

The Viet Cong tunneled directly under American military bases, popped up
and shot at sleeping soldiers who had no clue where the close-range sniper
fire was coming from. They tunneled into villages controlled by the
Americans and South Vietnamese and wreaked havoc. The 1968 Tet Offensive
on Saigon was planned and launched, in part, from the underground command
centers in the tunnel network. 

When the Americans caught on to the terrifying maze below their feet, they
launched an attack of almost apocalyptic proportions. Chemical defoliant
and napalm were dropped from planes. Bulldozers cleared rice paddies,
villages and huge areas of jungle to locate tunnel entrances and eliminate
the enemy's cover. Most notably, B-52s unloaded so many massive bombs on
the area that it looks, in places, like the surface of the moon, pocked
with hundreds of 15-foot-deep craters. 

But the massive attacks did little to wipe out the tunnels. One bomb
crater is located no more than 10 feet from where a Viet Cong commander
slept on a cot with his head on a smooth log pillow. His quarters remain
intact. 

Today, the Cu Chi tunnels have been transformed from GI trap to tourist
trap, an eerie reminder of Vietnamese determination in what they call the
"American War." Ninety minutes by car from the increasingly Western
commerce of Ho Chi Minh City, the government has turned Cu Chi into a
bizarre theme park celebrating American failure. 

The twisted carcass of an American tank -- destroyed by a homemade bomb
fashioned in the Cu Chi tunnels -- sits near a captured American
helicopter. Various curio shops sell replicas of the Zippo lighters
favored by American soldiers. Visitors can fire the AK-47 rifles used by
the Viet Cong or a captured American M-16 for a dollar a bullet. And you
can buy Vietnamese cobra wine, with a snake inside the bottle, the same
stuff that was used to toast the local guerrillas. 

For about $5, a cheerful Vietnamese guide will take you through sections
of the tunnels that have been widened and restored for tourists. The tour
starts with a short hike into the jungle, along a path where all the trees
are small and thin -- none of the vegetation here is older than about 25
years, because the area was flattened by the Americans. 

First stop is an airy thatched gazebo with rows of folding chairs where
visitors watch a 15-minute videotape of "history." The grainy
black-and-white tape shows "gentle Cu Chi villagers" smelling flowers,
farming and fishing. Then it darkens into chaotic footage of the "crazed
American devils" bombing and clearing the land. Some of those same
flower-smelling villagers are shown receiving the highest decoration of
the day, the "American-killer medal." 

My guide relaxed in a hammock as I sat alone in the little theater, the
only tourist at this screening. When it was over, he walked over and
smiled. "Any questions?" he said. "Now we go see the tunnels." 

The phrase "American-killer medal" was still ringing in my ears as we
walked farther down the path, past the life-size replicas of Viet Cong
guerrillas wearing captured American canteens, grenades and combat belts.
The words made me think of all the people I have seen crying at the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Some of them mourn for men who
died in this place. 

The guide stopped in a small clearing and challenged me, and four South
Korean tourists who had joined us, to find a tunnel entrance there. We
kicked around in the leaves on the jungle floor. Nothing. Finally, the
guide brushed back some leaves right next to my feet, and there was a
wooden trapdoor. 

It was no more than 15 inches square, barely large enough for a child to
slide through. Still, the guide told us it was now roughly twice the size
it had been in the war, before being opened up for tourists. 

In another clearing, we dropped down through another trapdoor, this one
wider still. I slipped feet first into the narrow hole and ended up in a
small chamber, just big enough for all of us to gather in a crouch. The
guide pulled back a piece of board at the entrance to reveal a pit filled
with sharpened bamboo stakes. 

For the next hour, we sweated through tiny tunnels filled with hot, stale
air. We saw the "hospital," an eight-foot-square chamber that was
connected to an operating room where a single table sat beneath a captured
American parachute. Here, doctors used instruments kept in a small wooden
cabinet to operate on their wounded by the light of an oil lamp. 

We saw the kitchen, where smoke from the wood fire in the brick oven
escaped down a series of vents and dispersed more than 50 yards away. That
prevented the Americans from spotting a large plume of smoke from the air
and using it to target bombs. 

In the "political commissar's" quarters, we saw where high-ranking
officers slept on crude cots with logs for pillows. We visited a
conference room where up to 50 Viet Cong officers could meet to discuss
strategy. 

Then it was time to go deeper, to the second level of tunnels, which are a
little smaller than the first. It was here that the guide challenged us to
go 50 yards, from a dining area to the commander's quarters. 

It was creepy. There was almost no air and it was hot as an oven. As I
sweated along, with dirt falling in my eyes, I imagined what it must have
been like for Viet Cong soldiers crawling along even smaller tunnels,
lugging their AK-47s, living down here for months at a time. 

And I imagined what it must have been like for the Americans who crawled
in here after them. There are places on the third level where the tunnels
were intentionally narrowed to just a foot or so high, big enough to allow
small Vietnamese soldiers to wriggle through, but small enough to trap
most Americans. 

I crawled on. Too hot. Too dark. Silent. Too much like a grave. 
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