VN news (June 21)

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

Vietnam says Pol Pot's fate up to Cambodian people 
Vietnamese journalists taken to task for "moral decadence"...
Two Roman Catholic coadjutors nominated in Vietnam
German bank grants Vietnam nine million dollars
Iran, Vietnam Sign Oil, Rubber Production Pacts: Report
Gold diggers leave ugly marks on Vietnam's wild frontier

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Vietnam says Pol Pot's fate up to Cambodian people 

HANOI, Vietnam (Reuter) - Vietnam, whose invading army brought an end to
Pol Pot's "killing fields" rule of the 1970s, said Saturday that it was up
to the Cambodian people to judge the now-captured Khmer Rouge strongman. 

"We think the judgement against Pol Pot and his accomplices is first of
all the right of the Cambodian people, who are the victims of a terribly
inhuman genocidal crime committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge," the
foreign ministry said in a statement. 

The Cambodian government said Saturday that Pol Pot had been captured and
that efforts would be made to try him before an international court. 

The Vietnamese statement was in response to a question on whether Pol Pot
should be brought to international trial or dealt with by some other
means. 

The statement said the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 reign of terror, which was
responsible for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians, had been
condemned by public opinion all over the world and was "a crime against
the entire human race." 

It also noted that Pol Pot had been sentenced to death in absentia in 1979
and that King Norodom Sihanouk had recently announced there would never
been an amnesty for him. 

Communist-ruled Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 to oust the Khmer Rouge,
and installed a sympathetic government. It withdrew its forces in 1989. 

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Vietnamese journalists taken to task for "moral decadence"... 

HANOI, June 21 (AFP) - Vietnam's communist party general secretary Do Muoi
has lambasted the "moral decadence" and vulgarity of some sections of the
press, reports here said Saturday. 

"The political quality of a number of newspapers leaves a lot to be
desired," the Courrier du Vietnam quoted him as saying Friday on Vietnam's
national day of journalism. 

He denounced the "tendancy for vulgarity (and) sensationalism," the
publication of negative and inexact material, commentaries lacking in
objectivity and the "moral decadance" of some journalists, the paper said. 

Although he praised the contribution of the press in modernising the
country, he also condemned some journalists who were "exceptions" during a
visit to the national television studios, said the report. 

The criticisms appear to be aimed at the foreign press in Vietnam as most
of the national media is strictly controlled by the Ministry of the
Interior, the Ministry of Culture and Information and the influential
party commission on ideology. 

Do Muoi has made a series of recent high profile remarks on the need to
safeguard the founding principles of communism in Vietnam. 

He has also strongly urged journalists to resist the temptation to stray
from the official communist line and instead follow the teachings of the
late Ho Chi Minh, "the master of all revolutionary journalists." 

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Two Roman Catholic coadjutors nominated in Vietnam

HANOI, June 21 (AFP) - The Vatican has named two Vietnamese priests as
coadjutors in a move approved by the authorities here despite strained
relations with the Roman Catholic Church, reports said Saturday. 

The coadjutors, or assistant bishops, will serve in two central Vietnam
provinces, the official Nhan Dan daily reported. 

Priest Nguyen Tich Duc, 58, will serve in Buon Ma Thuot and Priest Nguyen
Van Nho, 60, was appointed new coadjutor in Nha Trang, the paper said. 

The ordination ceremony for the two coadjutors was held in the two
dioceses with members of the Roman Catholic clergy in attendance. 

Vietnam has strained relations with the Vatican which has accused Hanoi of
restricting religious freedom. Vietnam insists on maintaining control of
the appointment of Roman Catholic priests. 

There are some seven million Roman Catholics in Vietnam, the second
largest number of any country in Asia except for the Philippines. 

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German bank grants Vietnam nine million dollars 

HANOI, June 21 (AFP) - The German Bank for Reconstruction has provided
Vietnam nine million dollars in aid for a reafforestation project in
several central provinces, the official Vietnam News daily reported
Saturday. 

The aid agreement signed during a visit to Vietnam by Doctor Vogt,
chairman of the board of Germany's Kreditanstalt Fur Wiederaufbau (KFW)
will provide funds for planting forests to cover 21,000 hectares (51,870
acres) in central coastal provinces of Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Ha Tinh. 

Last year, the German government granted Vietnam six million dollars for a
reafforestation project in northern provinces and is considering further
funding for similar projects elsewhere in the country. 

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Iran, Vietnam Sign Oil, Rubber Production Pacts: Report

MANAMA (Dow Jones) -- Iran's vice-president Hasan Habibi has signed a
number of agreements with Vietnam, including a $14.0 million credit to
Hanoi, the Iranian government television reported Saturday. 

The two sides reached an agreement on oil development, the TV reported,
including plans to jointly build oil rigs and refineries. 

The TV said the funds would be used for the joint cultivation of rubber in
Vietnam. Iran will also build an Iranian-owned rubber-producing factory in
Vietnam, the report added. 

Habibi and his delegation left Hanoi for Ho Chi Minh City after the
signing of the agreements, the report said. 

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Gold diggers leave ugly marks on Vietnam's wild frontier 

Asia Times
06/20/97

by Andy Soloman

The land is devastated. What was once a fertile, rice-growing highland
river valley surrounded by steep forested hills is destroyed. It is
impossible to map the river course, and craters, piles of earth, sand and
mounds of washed pebbles litter the land. 

The search for gold has laid this land to waste. 

Over the past 17 years, people streamed to Na Ri district in what is now
the newly-created, but poverty-stricken province of Bac Kan, 200km north
of Hanoi. 

People scurry around like ants, shouldering baskets or buckets of earth,
slipping in the mud and tottering on bamboo duckboards. The lucky ones
have poor bamboo shacks for homes, the rest sleep where they can. 

Local people describe the area around Luong Thuong commune as if it had
been carpet-bombed by B52s, the American super bomber that pulverized so
much of the country through the long years of warfare. The craters here
could be as much as 30 meters deep and several hundred meters across. 

A chance to escape poverty and the prospect of a regular monthly wage
bring laborers from provinces all over Vietnam, while for the buong, the
private mine contractors or bosses, the dream of unimaginable riches keeps
them fevered. 

Vo Cuong Quyet is one of 24 buong working at the illegal gold mines in
Luong Thuong. His home is about 350km away in Ninh Binh province on
Vietnam's north central coast and he has been here for 11 years. He is
married with four children, the youngest, a girl of seven. 

Quyet's forearm is tattooed with the motto "Pledged to the hard life". 

"I'm still dreaming of being a billionaire, that's why I stay here," Quyet
said. "But I am only able to cover my costs. If I'm lucky, every year
after paying the expenses, I only have one tael left (worth about
US$420)." 

A few days earlier, Quyet had been forced to return his six child laborers
to their home district in Ninh Binh, and now was left with only two adult
workers. His crater was shared with three other buong, and between them,
100 employees worked in muddy, brown water shifting rocks, sand and earth
to washing traps. 

"Before, there was much more gold but now there is less every year," Quyet
said. "If I am allowed by the authorities, I will continue this job until
my last breath." 

The gold rush in Luong Thuong peaked in the late 1980s when thousands of
prospectors descended on the area and swelled the 1,600 population to more
than 12,000. Gold is getting harder to find, with people sifting,
resifting, and sifting again previously-searched earth and sand. 

Now the numbers of diggers have dwindled, although local and provincial
officials were unable to estimate exactly how many gold hunters there
were. 

Most of the workers earn only 200,000 dong (US$17.40) a month plus food.
But tales of labor abuses, including widespread child labor, and
non-payment of wages left many of the migrants with nothing but broken
promises. 

Stories abound of workers, adults and children alike, not being paid wages
for years at a time while the buong dreams of the big find. Accidents are
common. On May 29 in Kim Hy, another gold area near Luong Thuong, four
workers died when heavy rains flooded the cave where they were digging. 

Few, if any, of the buong are wealthy, and many lost everything they had
in a bid to feed their addiction to getting rich in communist Vietnam. 

"Some years we suffer losses and have to sell everything to pay the
debts," said Quyet, who estimated he had invested 50 million dong in
mining. "I've seen many people go bankrupt and have to sell even their
houses to pay the debts." 

Any benefits the district, province or people may have had from gold was
far outweighed by the attendant problems. 

Nearly all mines are illegal, opium abuse, prostitution and crime are
serious concerns, and the environment is beyond recovery. All water is
polluted, and Luong Thuong commune has lost about 25 percent of its
cultivable land to the itinerant panhandlers. 

"Since 1980, the gold rush has been in full swing. For more than 20 years,
the river is always full of sands and muddy, not clear like other rivers,"
Hoang Duc Hoan, chairman of Na Ri district people's committee, said. 

Hoan said the unorganized nature of illegal mining had caused serious
pollution, the drug problem was growing and spreading out into the local
population, and that escaped convicts could be found working in the mines. 

Of greatest concern is the problem of child labor. A clampdown last month
gave mine contractors until June 8 to send home any children they had
working and they had to sign a commitment not to employ children again.
Only child workers in Luong Thuong have been ordered returned to their
homes by the authorities. No one knows how many are still working in other
areas in the jungle throughout the province. 

"Contractors violate the laws on labor and children's rights. If we know,
we force them to return the children," Hoan said. 

The chairman of Luong Thuong commune people's committee, 34-year-old Be
Van The, who spent three years searching for gold, said the recent
clampdown on child labor had seen 72 children returned to their home
provinces. 

"We started to prepare the child labor campaign many years ago but it was
very difficult for us because some kids were the children or relatives of
the buong," The said. He added that the youngest child to be sent home was
only 10 years old. 

Bac Kan province was created at the end of last year and came into being
from January 1, 1997. It is a high mountainous region with only a few poor
roads and a large ethnic minority population. The provincial figures
showed more than 23 percent of its 276,000 people living below the poverty
line. Malnutrition rates are high. 

Migrant gold hunters are digging, panning or mining underground in various
places throughout the province. But many are in the deep jungle and if the
authorities have difficulty controlling the situation in the more
accessible areas like Luong Thuong, then it is impossible elsewhere. 

But private gold hunters are not the only ones to blame for the
environmental destruction. The people who are now searching for gold here
followed in the wake of state-owned gold enterprises and a Russian joint
venture that arrived in 1992. 

The joint venture had its licence revoked in January after several years
of serious losses. Neither the state companies nor the Russians made any
attempts to re-green mined land. 

Leng Van Ty, one of three province vice-chairmen, was refreshingly candid
about the problems gold has brought. "There were state-owned enterprises
exploiting minerals, as well as the private diggers, but it was in a very
primitive way," he said. 

"Management and supervision is facing a lot of difficulties and that's why
there's negative phenomena like private gold contractors that illegally
exploit, but we can't control them." 

Ty said that during the child labor sweep on Luong Thuong on June 6, only
four of the 24 buong resisted. Three were temporarily detained and one
went on the run. 

The province came up with new regulations in late May requiring all miners
to be registered and to abide by the labor law. But the new law has yet to
be enforced. 

"We don't have enough forces to manage the problem and we have to do it
gradually," Ty said. 

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