My research currently focuses on two themes: (1) the political economy of Islamic political mobilization in democratic Indonesia and (2) financial politics in emerging market economies, both in Southeast Asia and beyond. I maintain a broader interest, however, in the political economy of reform and adjustment and Southeast Asian politics.
Below is a list of research projects and data. Click the titles to view.
Decentralization, Indonesia-Style January 2010 with Maria M. Wihardja Presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (Toronto).
'The Hidden Charm' is Vietnam's seductive tourist slogan. Many Vietnamese don't like it, but it teases foreigners' yearning for adventure and discovery. The phrase conjures an image which sums up the country: the peasant girl looks up, tips back the brim of her conical hat and reveals her shy smiling face beneath. The straw-coloured hat, the bright green paddy fields and the black buffalo grazing all around – a world pure and beautiful, hidden and charming. Make the effort, implies the slogan, and your reward will be a vision of tranquillity, grace and beauty. This Vietnam promises everything your modern world has left behind: delicate women, simple living and unspoilt landscapes. The country once torn apart in prime time has been reborn, its essence untouched by the predations of foreigners. Now it is available to the discerning visitor with the patience to find it.
Those without the time or the patience can still capture it – on canvas in one of the big-city sidewalk ateliers. Paint, tapestry and photography reproduce images of a country we know instantly is Vietnam: bicycle-riding girls in white ao dai, sun-aged women porting bamboo shoulder poles, boys astride buffalo and sampans piled high with fruit. It's overwhelmingly an aesthetic of details – paddy fields, peasants and pagodas – not wide landscape shots. The image of Vietnam we foreigners seek is a close-cropped study in 'otherness'. Zoom out from the girl in the conical hat and the newly erected pylon intrudes on the view. Turn away from the buffalo boy and the scene is 'spoiled' by his parents' new concrete house. Vietnamese development planners don't share the western tourist aesthetic. Call it socialist, call it proletarian or just call it ugly; they'd rather see an electricity substation than a pre-industrial rural landscape. The people want progress and prosperity. The fantasy country we seek is the one they want to leave behind.
We care about Vietnam for one reason above all. Through all the horrors the modern world could throw at it, it prevailed. No other country name has the same resonance: 'the lesson of Vietnam', 'the ghost of Vietnam', 'another Vietnam' – we know instantly all that these phrases imply. This 'Vietnam' has become an abstract place, trapped in a blood-soaked decade between 1965 and 1975. It lives on in daily discourse. 'Vietnam' has become a shorthand reference for so many cleavages within American society that on most days searching the newswires for 'Vietnam' will return more stories about the United States than Southeast Asia. A civil rights law will be described as 'Vietnam-era legislation', a motorist in an accident might be routinely described as a 'Vietnam veteran' and politicians and commentators wield 'the lessons of Vietnam' as a blunt instrument to defend their position on a gamut of foreign policy issues. Americans understand that these phrases imply far more than simply a faraway country.
This book isn't about that 'Vietnam'; it's about a country in Southeast Asia with almost 90 million inhabitants, the 13th most populous country in the world, the country which moved and inspired me and where I lived for a while until I was told to leave. It doesn't claim to be a view of the country untainted by all the different visions others have projected upon it, nor a vision of some 'essential' Viet Nam which exists behind these projections. Vietnam keeps its secrets well. Foreigners can live there a long time and fail to understand why things happen the way they do until Vietnamese friends patiently explain what, to them, is blindingly obvious – and things slowly fall into place. Many times I would finish a news report and think that I had made a breakthrough, that this time I really understood what was going on – only to have a friend or colleague, often from the BBC's Vietnamese Service, point out some vital element of the story that I had no idea even existed. Many times I felt I was just describing ripples on the surface, while beneath great currents were at work. This book is an attempt to describe those currents.
Vietnam is in the middle of a revolution: capitalism is flooding into a nominally communist society, fields are disappearing under new industrial parks, villagers are flocking to booming cities and youth culture is blooming. Dense networks of family relationships are being strained by demands for greater personal freedom and traditions are being eroded by the lure of modern living.
It's one of the most breathtaking periods of social change anywhere, ever. Vietnam is a very different place, even from a decade ago. When Robert Templer wrote Shadows and Wind in the late 1990s, Vietnam was a sclerotic country mired in economic crisis and unwilling to make the changes necessary to unleash its innate dynamism. It still faces mighty challenges and it does so with a severely strained political system but it is also a country in the middle of – to use the official slogan – renovation. There is ambition everywhere: from the kids crammed into after-school English classes to the political leaders who want their country to catch up with the Tigers of East Asia. The question is whether the leaders' ambitions will match those of the masses. Can Communist Party-ruled Vietnam meet the aspirations of its people?
The signs, so far, are broadly positive. Vietnam has made great strides – delivering basic education, healthcare and a rising standard of living to almost everyone. Political leaders have passed on power without violence or crisis and are actively thinking about what they must do to remain in charge of a young, vibrant and ambitious society. Vietnam is proof that development can work; that a poor society can become better-off, and in a dramatically short period of time. International development agencies flourish there, basking in the reflected glory of the country's achievements. They hold up Vietnam as a model of economic liberalisation and political reform. The truth is not so straightforward.
Many people have assumed that, with billions of dollars of foreign investment piling into Vietnam, political change will inevitably follow. But liberalisation only began because of the need to feed and employ a burgeoning population and even now its limits are rigorously policed. The trappings of freedom are apparent on every city street but, from the economy to the media, the Communist Party is determined to remain the sole source of authority. Beneath the great transformation lurks a paranoid and deeply authoritarian political system. Vietnam's prospects are not as clear as they might first appear to outsiders. The risks of economic mismanagement, of popular dissatisfaction and environmental damage – made more dangerous by an intolerance of public criticism – mean the country's prospects are far from assured. Everything depends upon the Communist Party maintaining coherence and discipline at a time when challenges to stability are growing by the day.
The problem for the Party leadership is how to stay in control. The Party has never been a monolithic organisation; its rule depends on balancing the competing interests of a range of factions – from the army, to the bosses of state-owned enterprises and its rank and file members. In the past this gave it the flexibility to adapt and survive but now seems to prevent it from confronting the new elite who are twisting the country's development in their own favour and laying the ground for future crisis. As well-connected businesspeople build top-heavy empires with cosy links to cheap money and influence, people at the bottom are being squeezed by increases in the cost of living. The system often looks like, in the words of Gore Vidal, 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'.
Vietnam has come a long way in the past 30 years but its evolution has often been through crisis. The contradictions inherent in simultaneously having communist control and eating capitalist cake have come to breaking point near the end of each decade: 1979, 1988, 1997 and 2008. Each time, the Party has found a peaceful way through but the resolution has only set the stage for the next battle. Future outcomes will depend on the balance of forces within the Communist Party and between the Party and outsiders. Anyone who has witnessed the motorised armadas of youth which circulate Vietnamese cities at weekends can appreciate the challenge the Party leaders face. Over the next few years a less hobbled society and vested interests will test and re-test the limits of what is possible while the Party centre tries to recapture power. Every day, petty conflicts are being fought in fields, cybercafés and offices. Whatever happens next is unlikely to be dull.
There is an excellent review of this very candid book in the June 24, 2010 issue of The New York Review of Books, but it is available in full only to subscribers of the _online_ edition. I get the print edition and read it there. For the brief except available online, go to
This month, nearly 600 drug addicts broke out of a rehabilitation center in the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong. The addicts overpowered guards at the state-run treatment facility and made a break for it. "We were completely overwhelmed," a security guard told the Associated Press. "Forty of us were not able to prevent them, many with canes and bricks, from escaping." Videos on the Internet show crowds of escapees marching through city streets.
Why were hundreds of patients fleeing treatment? Because in Vietnam, "treatment" looks a lot more like forced labor, complete with beatings and years of involuntary detention. Like neighboring Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand, the government of Vietnam has adopted a "get-tough" approach to drug treatment rather than evidence-based treatment. In Vietnam, more than 100 government-run facilities detain between 35,000 to 45,000 people for extrajudicial sentences of up to four years.
Vietnamese in these treatment centers are engaged in what the government calls "therapeutic labor": long hours at menial jobs for below-market wages -- whatever's left, that is, after the centers deduct for the cost of their meager food and Spartan lodging. Those who fail to meet work quotas are beaten. Patients who violate center rules can be locked in solitary confinement. "[T]hey beat people up, kicked the face, kicked the chest," a former resident of a rehab center near Hanoi told the BBC in 2008. "Later, people were made to work very hard. They said work to forget the addiction, work is therapeutic."
Opium cultivation and smoking are not new phenomena in Vietnam. But with economic liberalization and increased migration since the 1980s has come greater economic polarization and drug abuse. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 injecting drug users in the country today, and nearly one in three is HIV infected.
Drug treatment hasn't kept pace with increasing abuse, and aside from some small-scale programs, allowed by the government but largely funded by other donors, effective treatment is virtually nonexistent. Instead, the government emphasizes compulsory, institutionalized treatment that isn't just inhumane, but also next to useless. Government reports have said that 70 to 80 percent of those who spend time in a center return to drug use. Other estimates put the rate closer to 90 percent -- and when drug users do relapse, they have no place to go, especially not to a compulsory "treatment" center. According to a study published this spring in the Journal of Urban Health, drug users in Vietnam who have been in rehab centers are more likely to be infected with hepatitis C than those who have not. Another study found that detention and fear of police led to greater risk of HIV infection among Vietnamese users.
In fact, Haiphong's escapees probably stand a better chance on the outside, if they can stay there: The city is one of three in Vietnam that is piloting the use of methadone to manage opiate addiction, the preferred approach in most developed countries. Indeed, trials of methadone maintenance therapy were already successfully conducted in Hanoi in the mid-1990s. So why not increase the number of slots in the Haiphong methadone clinic and offer the escapees voluntary enrollment? The U.S. government could help ensure that those who escaped can access services by redirecting its funding, which currently goes to HIV-treatment programs inside these abusive centers (though not the centers themselves), to programs based in the community.
Indeed, were Haiphong to expand access to the community-based drug treatment services it already offers and add counseling, employment prospects, and housing assistance, the city could become a model of humane and sustainable treatment. Those who were only occasional drug users -- and who don't need drug addiction treatment in the first place -- are more likely to find meaningful work and social support networks in the community to avoid becoming addicted. Serious addicts and casual users alike are likely to find better HIV prevention programs and services in the community.
Drug rehabilitation should provide drug users with a chance to regain control of their lives, repair broken relationships, and overcome destructive addictions. Rehab in Vietnam ruptures the lives of drug users, severs social support, and pretty much guarantees a return to drug use after years of abuse. No wonder drug users are escaping.
BANGKOK — The first in a series of trials of dissidents in Vietnam concluded Monday, when a court convicted a former army officer of subversion for pro-democracy activities and sentenced him to five-and-a-half years in prison.
The conviction of the former officer, Tran Anh Kim, 60, comes as the government is tightening controls on dissent in advance of a Communist Party congress in early 2011.
Mr. Kim is one of five activists who were arrested in June and at first, faced the less serious charge of spreading antigovernment propaganda. But this month, Mr. Kim and at least two others were charged with the capital crime of subversion. Prosecutors asked for a lighter sentence in view of the military background of Mr. Kim, a wounded veteran.
Sentences in political cases are generally determined in advance, and the trial, held in Thai Binh Province in northeastern Vietnam, took just four hours. The other four campaigners are scheduled to go to trial next month. The most prominent among them is Le Cong Dinh, 41, an American-educated lawyer who has defended human rights campaigners and has called for multiparty democracy.
The others are Nguyen Tien Trung, who recently studied engineering in Paris; Tran Huynh Duy Thuc; and Le Thang Long. They are among dozens of dissidents and bloggers who have been arrested in recent months as the government attempts to set the boundaries of public speech before the party congress, which is held every five years, diplomats and political analysts said.
In court, the defiant Mr. Kim acknowledged his membership in the Democratic Party of Vietnam, an outlawed group of small affiliated parties and opposition factions. In June, Mr. Kim attempted to hang a sign at his house saying, “Office of the Democratic Party of Vietnam.”
He also said he had joined Bloc 8406, a group of petitioners calling for democratic elections and a multiparty state. The petition was released on April 8, 2006 — hence its name — but Mr. Kim was not one of the original 118 signatories.
A principal architect of Bloc 8406, Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest, was convicted and sentenced along with four other dissidents in March 2007. He received an eight-year prison term for “overtly revolutionary activities” and “conspiring with reactionary forces,” according to the official Vietnam News Agency.
Journalists who watched the proceedings on closed-circuit television quoted Mr. Kim as saying he had been fighting for “democratic freedom and human rights through peaceful dialogue and nonviolent means.”
“I am a person of merit,” he was quoted as saying. “I did not commit crimes.”
Judge Tran Van Loan said Mr. Kim had participated in what he called an organized crime against the state, cooperating with “reactionary Vietnamese and hostile forces in exile.”
“This was a serious violation of national security,” the judge said.
The site of Mr. Kim’s trial, Thai Binh, was likely to resonate with government loyalists and dissidents alike. The coastal province is the birthplace of some of the country’s legendary military heroes and political leaders, including Politburo members, senior generals and Vietnam’s first cosmonaut, Pham Tuan.
But Thai Binh also has been home to some of the most ardent critics of the government, notably the writer Duong Thu Huong, whose banned novel, Paradise of the Blind, was a searing description of life in postwar Vietnam, and Thich Quang Do, a Buddhist monk who has been a critic of the Communist government for decades.
In 1997, farmers and workers in Thai Binh staged a violent rebellion against local party leaders over tax increases, land seizures and the misuse of public funds. The violence unnerved the central government, which dismissed a number of party bosses in Thai Binh but also instituted a harsh crackdown there on public gatherings and political dissent.
Seth Mydans reported from Bangkok, and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.
HANOI – Vietnam is considering putting price controls on a broad array of products and is cracking down on certain personal and political activity, in a sharp reversal of what has been a move toward more-open markets and a more-open society.
Foreign businesses worry about the threat of price controls—something many analysts consider a hallmark of Vietnam's Marxist past. That comes after authorities last month blocked access to Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, following cases in which several bloggers were detained, then released, on charges of criticizing the government. In October, nine people were given stiff sentences for calling for pro-democracy protests.
Carlyle Thayer, a veteran Vietnam watcher and professor at the Australian Defense Academy in Canberra, says conservative factions in the ruling Politburo are tightening their grip on the country as Vietnam's economic worries—especially inflation and fallout from currency devaluations—grow. He says he expects more crackdowns and arrests to come in the run-up to the country's 2011 Party Congress, a major political event that will aim to map out Vietnam's political and economic direction for the following five years.
In turn, the crackdowns threaten to curtail investment and economic growth in the country.
For years, foreign donors and investors hoped that rapid growth would lead to more political debate and economic freedom here, cementing the country's emergence as one of Asia's most dynamic new economies and an important link in the global supply chain.
That's what happened in some other fast-growing countries in the region. In the 1980s and 1990s, the strengthening economies of South Korea and Taiwan helped pro-democracy movements overcome military-backed regimes.
But in Vietnam, leaders seek a path to a quick expansion of the country's $100 billion economy without spurring any grass-roots clamor for more freedom.
Now, the price-control unit of Vietnam's Finance Ministry is drafting proposals that, if implemented by the government, would compel private and foreign-owned companies to report pricing structures, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal and corroborated by Vietnamese officials.
In some cases, the proposed rules would allow the government to set prices on a wide range of privately made or imported goods, including petroleum products, fertilizers and milk to help contain inflation as Vietnam continues pumping money into its volatile economy. Typically, the government applies this kind of aggressive measure only to state-owned businesses, and it is unclear whether Vietnam will write the wider rules into law.
Myron Brilliant, senior vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, wrote to Vietnamese officials, in a Dec. 15 letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal, saying the plan will "serve as a disincentive to new direct investment in Vietnam."
Vietnamese citizens, meanwhile, are having to give up some political and social freedoms they previously enjoyed, as their Communist leaders struggle with a series of currency devaluations and a worsening inflation problem.
Diplomats are raising their voices over Internet curbs. "This isn't about teenagers chatting online," U.S. Ambassador Michael Michalak told a donor conference on Dec. 3. "It's a question of people's rights to communicate with one another and to do business."
Swedish Ambassador Rolf Bergman, speaking on behalf of the European Union at the same conference, urged Vietnam "to lift all restrictions on the Internet."
Vietnamese government officials didn't respond to requests for comment, except to confirm the existence of the draft price-control plans.
Emerging economies have reversed course during times of crisis before. In Vietnam's neighborhood, both Malaysia and Thailand have used capital controls to stabilize currencies, while unexpected legal rulings are a frequent hazard to doing business in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
Vietnam, a country of 86 million, was considered by many economists to be a surer bet with less political risk. Analysts called it "the new China," and major global names from America, Japan, and South Korea—including U.S. corporations such as Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp.—were among those who set up operations there.
Now, Vietnam's worsening human-rights record is encouraging some important trade partners to shake off their previous reluctance to condemn the country, in part because they worry that rising international criticism could make it harder to expand trade ties there.
Many economists and analysts say the country's leaders are panicking over how quickly Vietnam is lurching from boom to bust and back again, and are taking drastic measures—politically and economically—to restore their grip on the country. The country's recent economic ups and downs have, says one long-time Vietnam-based analyst, "shaken the authorities' confidence in the notion that economic reform and opening is automatically good."
The contrast with the older Vietnam—the Vietnam that helped define the term "pioneer market" among investors—is striking. In the years leading up to Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2007, the ruling Politburo attempted to put its best face to the world by appointing an economic reformer, Nguyen Tan Dung, as prime minister. It encouraged local media to expose corruption and fraud, while dissidents were given limited space to vent their criticism of Vietnam's one-party system. Religious groups were granted more freedom to practice their faiths.
At the same time, the economy quickly expanded, driven by foreign manufacturers who flocked to take advantage of Vietnam's low labor and land costs. Much of that economic story is still in place. The World Bank expects Vietnam's economy to expand 5.5% in 2009. That's a much better performance than many of its neighbors. Economists such as Ayumi Konishi, the Asian Development Bank's country director for Vietnam, say the country's long-term prospects are still rosy.
But the World Bank's growth forecast is weaker than the 8%-plus rates that Vietnam has come to depend on. Widening trade and budget deficits have forced the government to devalue its currency three times since June 2008, most recently in November, when it shaved 5% off the value of the Vietnamese dong. That move spurred fears of rising inflation, prompting a scramble among many Vietnamese to store their wealth in gold or dollars instead.
Professor Thayer, of the Australian Defense Academy, and other analysts note that leaders such as To Huy Rua, chief of the party's propaganda committee, and military intelligence chief Nguyen Chi Vinh, have become increasingly influential since Vietnam's economic problems began to set in last year, largely at the expense of Mr. Dung, the reform-minded prime minister. Mr. Rua is believed to be suspicious of free-market capitalism and critical of the country's transition toward a more open economy. Attempts to reach him weren't successful.
Similarly, analysts say key economic policy makers also harbor a strong conservative streak, and observe that the country has halted economic reforms before, notably during Asia's 1990s financial crisis. People familiar with the price-controls issue say a number of diplomatic missions, including that of the U.S., have raised the price-cap issue with Vietnam. Officials at the U.S. embassy in Hanoi didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The biggest losers in Vietnam's step back into the past, are the country's dissidents, journalists and bloggers. Several bloggers and activists were detained for writing comments critical of Vietnam's encouragement of Chinese companies to mine for aluminum ore in the country's central highlands region. The mining plan has become a lightning rod for various dissident groups in Vietnam, and opponents include war hero Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, who led Vietnamese forces against French and U.S. troops in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.
Some detainees were released after promising not to raise political issues again, but lawyer Le Cong Dinh was arrested in June for defending antigovernment activists.
Six people were sentenced on Oct. 9 for allegedly "conducting propaganda against the state" for demanding multiparty elections online and through public gestures, such as hanging banners on bridges. They included a prominent novelist, Nguyen Xuan Nghia.
On Oct 7, three other people were jailed for the same offense—something the U.S. embassy in a statement said it found "deeply disturbing."
EU, Other Donors Should Condemn Officials’ Complicity in Pagoda Siege
December 16, 2009
(New York) - Heavy-handed tactics by Vietnam's central government to disband followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a prominent Buddhist monk who has called for religious reforms, illustrate Vietnam's ongoing contempt for human rights and religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said today.
For three days, beginning December 9, 2009, orchestrated mobs that included undercover police and local communist party officials terrorized and assaulted several hundred monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue pagoda in central Lam Dong province. Phuoc Hue's abbot has provided sanctuary to the monastics since late September, when police and civilian mobs violently expelled them from their own monastery of Bat Nha, located in the same commune.
During last week's attack, mobs targeted Phuoc Hue's abbot, threatening and haranguing him until they finally forced his consent to a December 31 deadline for the Bat Nha monastics to vacate the pagoda.
"Vietnam's international donors should insist that the government halt the attacks on the monks and nuns in Lam Dong, allow them to practice their religion, and prevent any further violent expulsions," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "And they should make clear they will keep close tabs on the situation."
The three-day vigilante assault on Phuoc Hue disrupted a December 9 European Union (EU) fact-finding mission to the pagoda, which was followed by an EU human rights dialogue with Vietnam on December 11. A European Parliament resolution passed in late November called on Vietnam to respect religious freedom and condemned the harassment and persecution of Buddhists in Lam Dong, as well as of followers of other religions and branches of Buddhism.
The EU, one of Vietnam's largest donors, pledged US $1 billion in aid to Vietnam at a donor conference in early December. Sweden - the current EU president - and other donors have pressed Vietnam to lift its restrictions on independent media, religious freedom, and peaceful dissent. A 1995 EU-Vietnam Cooperation Agreement affirms that respect for human rights and democratic principles is the basis for the cooperation.
"The vigilante action to prevent diplomats from meeting with the monks and nuns is a real slap in the face to the EU," Pearson said. "The EU needs to make clear that it has leverage and will use it."
Over the past year, government officials have intensified efforts to disband the community of young monks and nuns that until September was based at a meditation center at Bat Nha monastery established by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2005. Authorities began to take steps to close the center after Thich Nhat Hanh urged the government in 2007 to ease its restrictions on religious freedom.
Thich Nhat Hanh first drew international attention in the 1960s as a leader of South Vietnamese Buddhists opposed to the US war in Vietnam, critical of all sides to the conflict. He continued his anti-war activities from exile in France after he left the country in 1965. The government barred him from returning as he increasingly took on human rights issues, including the plight of the thousands of boat people who fled Vietnam after the communist victory in 1975 and the persecution of Buddhist clergy and patriarchs.
Since the September eviction at Bat Nha, authorities have relentlessly harassed and pressured the Bat Nha Buddhists to vacate Phuoc Hue and other pagodas that took them in, periodically cutting electricity and water and barring local lay people from providing food and supplies. According to government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, in late November local officials were ordered to begin organizing civilians to demonstrate against the monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue, demand the expulsion of the pagoda's abbot, and pressure the monks and nuns to return to their home provinces.
Mob action at Phuoc Hue
On December 9, more than 100 people marched into Phuoc Hue pagoda. Many wore motorcycle helmets, baseball caps, and dust masks - common attire on Vietnam's roadways but not inside Buddhist temples. Coordinated by whistle-blowing leaders, the crowds dragged the abbot out of his room, shouting insults, and demanding that he expel the Bat Nha Buddhists. Video footage captured by some of the monastics show the attackers shoving aside monks and nuns trying to protect the abbot, and assaulting others trying to take photographs.
The crowds, which swelled to 200 people at times over the course of the three days, included people brought in from as far away as Nam Dinh province - 1500 km north of Lam Dong - who told observers they had been mobilized by government officials for three days' work, at 200,000 dong (US $11) a day.
Police cordoned off the streets around the pagoda, with officers posted at the homes of townspeople who had been providing food to the monks and nuns, to prevent them from leaving their homes. The police did nothing to stop the mobs - some armed with hammers and sticks - from attempting to break down the door to the abbot's room, overrunning the pagoda, and terrorizing the monks and nuns. When nuns sat down to pray and chant civilians loomed over them, pulling at their ears and shouting so close to their faces that the nuns had to wipe away the spit.
Leaders of the mob, who included local cadre from party-controlled mass organizations, used megaphones to blast the sounds of police sirens and intensely loud electronic dance music into the pagoda compound. In desperation, the monks began ringing the temple bell constantly to sound an alarm. An ambulance was parked in front of the pagoda.
The provincial head of a special police unit within the Ministry of Public Security called A41 was present during the three days of mob activity. Often called the "religious police," A41 monitors groups the government considers to be religious "extremists" throughout Vietnam.
"What's disturbing about this mob attack is that the Vietnamese government not only failed to protect its own citizens, but that the authorities actively participated in the abuses," said Pearson.
More than half of the Bat Nha monastics remaining at Phuoc Hue are young Vietnamese women recently ordained as nuns. "The nuns don't know where to go - they feel trapped now," one observer told Human Rights Watch. "The whole experience was very traumatic - some were pushed, shoved, spit upon, and even assaulted. Their community has been spiritually killed. They are afraid to be split up and sent back to their home provinces - they want to stay together, in a safe place."
The December 31 eviction deadline for the young monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue coincides with an International Conference on Buddhist women hosted by the Vietnamese government in Ho Chi Minh City. "It's ironic that as young nuns and monks face the possibility of another violent eviction on December 31, participants at a government-hosted international Buddhist conference in Vietnam will be discussing the role of female Buddhists in preventing conflicts and violence," said Pearson.
Orchestrated mob action is not a new phenomenon in Vietnam, particularly in remote "hot spots," where authorities want to prevent any interaction between local communities and international visitors such as diplomats and journalists.
"What was different in Lam Dong is that diplomats saw with their own eyes government-orchestrated suppression of religious freedom and basic rights," Pearson said. "As such, the EU is uniquely placed to convey its strong concerns to the Vietnamese government about what happened."
Human Rights Watch has obtained copies of a series of directives from the government, ruling Communist Party, and government-appointed Buddhist officials that appear to order the assault on the pagoda.
A November 26 directive from the government's Religious Affairs Committee instructed local Buddhist officials and the Communist People's Committee to "mobilize" the Bat Nha Buddhists to return to their "proper residences" in their home provinces. Similar directives were issued by the official Vietnam Buddhist Church - a government-appointed body - on November 30, and by the local People's Committee on December 7.
"The EU and other donors should make it clear that they hold the Vietnamese government responsible for last week's events in Lam Dong," Pearson said. "Vietnam's donors need to voice their strong concerns, monitor the situation very closely, and do their best to be physically present at Phuoc Hue pagoda on the December 31 eviction deadline."
As a U.S. senator during the 1960s, I agonized over the badly mistaken war in Vietnam. After doing all I could to save our troops and the Vietnamese people from a senseless conflict, I finally took my case to the public in my presidential campaign in 1972. Speaking across the nation, I told audiences that the only upside of the tragedy in Vietnam was that its enormous cost in lives and dollars would keep any future administration from going down that road again.
I was wrong. Today, I am astounded at the Obama administration's decision to escalate the equally mistaken war in Afghanistan, and as I listen to our talented young president explain why he is adding 30,000 troops -- beyond the 21,000 he had added already -- I can only think: another Vietnam. I hope I am incorrect, but history tells me otherwise.
Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all believed that the best way to save the government in Saigon and defeat Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Cong insurgents was to send in U.S. troops. But the insurgency only grew stronger, even after we had more than 500,000 troops fighting and dying in Vietnam.
We have had tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan for several years, and we have employed an even larger number of mercenaries (or "contractors," as they're called these days). As in Vietnam, the insurgent forces are stronger than ever, and the Afghan government is as corrupt as the one we backed in Saigon.
Why do we send young Americans to risk life and limb on behalf of such worthless regimes? The administration says we need to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But the major al-Qaeda forces are in Pakistan.
The insurgency in Afghanistan is led by the Taliban. Its target is its own government, not our government. Its only quarrel with us is that its members see us using our troops and other resources to prop up a government they despise. Adding more U.S. forces will fuel the Taliban further.
Starting in 1979, the Soviets tried to control events in Afghanistan for nearly a decade. They lost 15,000 troops, and an even larger number of soldiers were crippled or wounded. Their treasury was exhausted, and the Soviet Union collapsed. A similar fate has befallen other powers that have tried to work their will on Afghanistan's collection of mountain warlords and tribes.
We have the best officers and combat troops in the world, but they are weary after nearly a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why waste these fine soldiers any longer?
Even if we had a good case for a war in Afghanistan, we simply cannot afford to wage it. With a $12 trillion debt and a serious economic recession, this is not a time for unnecessary wars abroad. We should bring our soldiers home before any more of them are killed or wounded -- and before our national debt explodes.
In 1964, Johnson asked several senators who were not running for reelection that year if we would campaign for him. He assured those of us who were opposed to the war in Vietnam that he had no plans to expand the U.S. presence. Johnson won the election in a landslide, telling voters he sought no wider war. "We are not about to send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," he assured during his campaign.
But once elected, Johnson began to pour in more troops until American forces reached exceeded 500,000. All told, more than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, and many more were crippled in mind and body. This is to say nothing of the nearly 2 million Vietnamese who died under U.S. bombardment.
Johnson had a brilliant record in domestic affairs, but Vietnam choked his dream of a Great Society. The war had become unbearable to so many Americans -- civilian and military -- that the landslide victor of 1964 did not seek reelection four years later.
Obama has the capacity to be a great president; I just hope that Afghanistan will not tarnish his message of change. After half a century of Cold War and hot wars, it is time to rebuild our great and troubled land. By closing down the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can divert the vast sums being spent there to revitalizing our own nation.
In 1972, I called on my fellow citizens to "Come home, America." Today, I commend these words to our new president.
George McGovern, a former senator from South Dakota and a decorated World War II combat veteran, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.
State agencies are still using public assets ineffectively and sometimes causing a big waste of resources, deputies said at the National Assembly session on Thursday.
Reports by the NA Budget and Finance Committee showed many ministries and local departments are managing a large amount of public land and offices ineffectively and some are using the asset for wrong purposes, they said.
The management board of President Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was found to have rented their office on Dien Bien Phu Street, Hanoi from 1997-2007 to earn more than VND3.6 billion (US$201,600).
Ho Chi Minh City Customs office was also named in the report as renting its land illegally while Vietnam Television in Hue had left the seventh, eighth, and ninth stories comprising 1,500 square meters of space unused in its office.
A Nissan car at the Da Nang Television in the central region had been left unused for the whole of last year while the Ministry of Transport did not keep records of two cars it was using, the report found.
The report also showed that as of the end of 2008, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment still kept assets that it didn’t use or didn’t need worth VND24.9 billion. Similar assets with the Finance Ministry were valued at more than VND9.3 billion; with the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs at VND9.2 billion; with HCMC state agencies at VND11.7 billion; and with northern Hai Duong Province at VND83.2 billion.
The Ho Chi Minh City administration will ask the government to increase fines imposed on firms that employ illegal workers by ten times.
Le Hoang Quan, chairman of the city’s People’s Committee, said the fines against employers found using illegal workers, currently between VND5 million (US$280) and VND10 million ($560), were too low to act as a deterrent.
The city will suggest fines of VND50-100 million instead, he said at a meeting held on Friday to discuss the rising number of violations related to hiring foreign workers.
A total of 16,800 foreigners are currently working in the city and nearly 3,000 don’t have labor permits, the city’s Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs estimated. Most of them are employed in footwear and textiles and garment companies.
But Le Xuan Vien, deputy head of Vietnam’s Immigration Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security, said the real number may be higher.
“A recent inspection by the ministry of seven companies in the city showed three quarters of 1,338 foreign workers don’t have labor permits,” he said.
Nguyen Van Xe, deputy director of the city’s Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said many companies began using foreign workers before asking for labor permits while many others did not report to the authorities that they were employing foreign workers.
Nguyen Van Anh, head of the city’s Immigration Management Department, said many unskilled Africans have entered the country as tourists and stayed on to work temporarily for businesses in the city.
Some of them have asked Vietnamese people to seek investment certificates for opening restaurants, hotels, and karaoke parlours, he said.
Vien said foreign workers without permits could be expelled from the country.
He said companies that had employed foreigners for three months in Vietnam without work permits would get three more months to get them. After that, foreigners without work permits will be asked to leave, he added.
Quach To Dung, deputy director of the city’s Department of Industry and Trade, said her agency had revoked 400 of 2,398 foreign companies’ operation licenses due to different labor law violations this year.
But as no fines have been imposed on such cases, most of then have yet to close down, she said.
In the first nine months of this year, the HCMC police registered 52 crimes involving 127 foreigners.
Of them, 16 were involved in drug trafficking, 16 others in swindling and 12 in robberies. Most of the violators were from Nigeria, Turkey and some Asian countries like Iran, Korea, the Philippines and India, city police said.
Lessons learned and practical experiences for future program design and implementation. 2002-2008. The report features an overview culled from The Foundation's experience in implementing program interventions in collaboration with an expanding network of local and international partners that share our commitment to bettering the lives of trafficking victims and protecting those at-risk of being trafficked.
At least 38 people have died and 10 people are missing in central Vietnam after typhoon Ketsana hit the region Tuesday afternoon, according to the national flood and storm control committee.
Another 73 people have been injured, and over 100,000 houses with at least 90 boats were damaged or submerged, the committee said on Tuesday evening.
Ketsana, which strengthened from a tropical low on Saturday and killed at least 246 people in the Philippines before heading for Vietnam, has since weakened into a low.
The central provinces had managed to evacuate over 370,000 residents to safe areas before the storm touched land, local authorities said.
“Different from other storms that often cause heavy rains after their landfall, the ninth storm [to hit the East Sea this year] has caused much heavier rains over a large area before and during its arrival in Quang Nam – Quang Ngai provinces,” said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dao Xuan Hoc.
“[This] has caused especially severe flooding and some rivers have risen to record levels,” Hoc said.
In fact, with the rainfall measuring up to 1,300 millimeters in some localities like Thua Thien – Hue on Tuesday evening, water levels in the Tra Bong River reached 5.58 meters, 0.19 meters higher than the historic flood peak in 1964.
Floods on the Po Ko River in Kon Tum province also made a record at 5.56 meters, 2.26 meters higher than the record set in 2006, according to Bui Minh Tang –director of the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF).
The flood waters will continue rising on Wednesday, NCHMF said on its website yesterday morning.
Meanwhile, power blackouts and severed traffic had isolated some localities like Thua Thien Hue, Quang Ngai, and Quang Nam.
Over 2,000 people on Nhon Chau Island in Binh Dinh Province were also totally cutoff from the mainland.
“The greatest challenge is not only food supply but also the spread and treatment of diseases,” said Ngo Van Quy, chairman of Nhon Chau People’s Committee said.
“Difficult births and appendicitis can be fatal if patients aren’t transferred to the mainland [for proper treatment]. Local people have to wait for at least another three days before accessing the mainland, in case the weather is good.”
According to the national forecast center, the fierce storm weakened into tropical low and reached the south of Laos with winds blowing at 31-96 kilometers per hour on Tuesday night.
The low will reach the northwest of Thailand on Wednesday, it added.
However, the center warned that the low pressure would still affect Vietnam, causing torrential rains, flash floods and landslides in the central and central highlands provinces.
On Tuesday afternoon Nguyen Van Thanh, deputy director of Saigon Railway Station, said the storm has caused them to cancel many trains from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to central provinces.
The cancellation and shortening of train routes will continue on Wednesday, he added.
Also on Tuesday, national carrier Vietnam Airlines announced it would resume flights from Hanoi and HCMC to the central region from Wednesday at 7 a.m., and add more flights on the routes.
They came from the province of Nam Dinh, south of Hanoi.
The falsified papers said the babies had been abandoned, making them eligible for adoption by foreign parents, the prosecutors said.
The group was operating from 2005 to July 2008, when the two key suspects were arrested.
The case came to light last year after the US embassy in Hanoi accused Vietnam of failing to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud and baby-selling to flourish.
The US report led Vietnam to end a bilateral adoption agreement.
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