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Journalists Miss the Real Vietnam at APEC Summit |
New America Media , News Analysis, Andrew Lam, Nov 17, 2006
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=a8ae9ed9d2cbd4e300489ce1ddeab879
Editor’s Note: The Asia Pacific leaders meeting in Hanoi this
weekend for the APEC summit allows the country to showcase its impressive
economic growth to the world. But behind this growth are social and
environmental problems that Vietnam doesn’t know how to solve. NAM editor Andrew
Lam is the author of
"Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books,
2005), which recently won a PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
Most of the
2,000 plus international journalists in Hanoi to cover the summit for Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation will probably
miss the real story of Vietnam: a country going through an internal crisis.
While Vietnam is being lauded as an emerging economic tiger of Asia, behind
that image are an array of chronic social and environmental problems seemingly
impossible to resolve.
Since the war ended in 1975, the country's population has more than doubled,
from around 35 million to 84 million. Nearly two out of three Vietnamese are too
young to have any direct memory of the Vietnam War. What they do have is a new
longing for the West and its stuff.
Materialism is the new ideology. These days everyone needs a cell phone, a
motorcycle, and if they can afford it, a flat screen tv and a laptop. Many will
do practically anything to own new toys.
When Vietnam emerged from the Cold War the forces of globalization quickly swept
it up. The result is a country whose Confucian practices – modesty, frugality,
respect - have been thrown out the window, especially in urban areas.
Part of the cultural revolution taking place is a sexual one. Once known for its
modesty and traditional practices, the abortion rate is around 1.5 million a
year, many unwanted teenage pregnancies. Statistics estimate that in only 4
years a million people will be infected with HIV. Prostitution is rampant, with
some NGO estimates that there are more than 300,000 prostitutes in the country.
Many other women are being trafficked to be prostitutes overseas.
Vietnam accounts for around 10% of trafficked women and children worldwide.
According to UNICEF and Vietnam's Ministry of Justice as well as other groups,
as many as 400,000 Vietnamese women and children have been trafficked overseas.
It is a conservative estimate and doesn’t account for mail order brides where
women are sent to places like Taiwan and Korea to work in brothels. And they
can’t expect much protection from their government.
According to the "Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000:
Trafficking in Persons Report." released last year by the U.S. State Department,
Vietnam was classified as a "tier two" country, meaning that the government,
makes some effort to but "does not fully comply with the minimum standards for
the elimination of trafficking."
For some, most worrying is the ongoing environmental degradation. In Vietnam,
the word moi truong- environment – is still not a familiar word, let alone the
term ‘sustainable development’. While foreign journalists love to cover the old
Agent Orange story, the real environment disaster for the country is how
population pressure is causing the depletion of forests, pushing the ecosystem
of Vietnam to the brink.
One out of three Vietnamese depend solely on forest and forest products for
their living, and the number is rising steadily, according to the United Nations
Development Program. Whereas the Vietnam War destroyed close to 5 million acres
of forestland, ten times that amount (some 50 million) more, has been destroyed
since. Vietnam experiences terrible floods each year that have killed thousands,
because there are far fewer trees in the central mountains and hills to absorb
the monsoon rain.
As Vietnam's forests shrink, some of the world's rare species (including three
of the world's ten mammals only recently discovered) now face extinction; the
green peacock, the Java rhino, the barking deer, the Asian elephant and the rare
Sao La ox. There is a lack of public awareness for the need for environmental
protection, so conservation practices are rare and government policies,
ineffective.
Vietnam boasts at 7.5% GNP growth, second fastest to China. Economic development
needs natural resources, but no one seems to have any good answers as to what to
do when the forests are gone. And economic progress does not create what the
country needs, a civil society in which citizens can fully participate, steering
the course of their collective future. This is only possible with real political
reform; a multiparty system with true freedom of expression, something the
Communist Party staunchly denies its population.
To prepare for the economic meeting Hanoi has been cleaning up for weeks.
Protesting peasants and the homeless were packed off to a camp far outside
Hanoi. Soldiers now patrol all quarters, especially the homes of well-known
political dissidents under house arrests. Hoang Minh Chinh, Le Hong Ha, Nguyen
Thanh Giang, Pham Que Duong, Hoang Tien, Nguyen Khac Toan, Nguyen Van Dai, Le
Thi Cong Nhan, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, Nguyen Phuong Anh, Bach Ngoc Duong, Le Chi
Quang are men and women of conscience and sorely needed to participate in
discussing Vietnam’s future.
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