What the scribes didn't write about Vietnam
Nov 20, 2006 - 2:33:37 PM
, Reviewed by: Priya Saxena
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To prepare for the economic meeting, Hanoi was cleaned up for weeks. Protesting peasants and the homeless were packed off to a camp far outside Hanoi. Soldiers patrolled all quarters, especially the homes of well-known political dissidents under house arrests.
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By Indo Asian News Service,
[RxPG] Hanoi, Nov 20 (IANS) Most of the 2,000-plus international journalists who were here to cover the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit probably missed the real story of Vietnam: a nation going through an internal crisis.
While Vietnam is being lauded as an emerging economic tiger of Asia, behind that image is an array of chronic social and environmental problems seemingly impossible to resolve, according to New America Media.
Since the war ended in 1975, the country's population has more than doubled from 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 would do anything to own new toys.
When Vietnam emerged from the Cold War, the forces of globalisation quickly swept through. The result is a country whose Confucian practices - modesty, frugality, respect - have been thrown out of 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 with many unwanted teenage pregnancies.
Statistics estimate that in only four years, a million people will be infected with HIV. Prostitution is rampant, with some NGOs estimating that there are more than 300,000 sex workers in the country. Many women are being trafficked overseas.
Vietnam accounts for 10 percent of women and children trafficking 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 - women sent to Taiwan and Korea to work in brothels.
According to the 'Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report' released last year by the US State Department, Vietnam was classified as a 'tier two' country, meaning that the government '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 one, 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 and pushing the ecosystem 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 Programme. Whereas the Vietnam War destroyed close to five million acres of forestland, 10 times that amount has been destroyed since.
Vietnam also experiences terrible floods each year that kill thousands, because there are far fewer trees in the central mountains and hills to absorb the monsoons.
As Vietnam's forests shrink, some of the world's rare species now face extinction, including three of the world's 10 mammals only recently discovered, 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 a 7.5 percent GNP growth, second fastest to China. Economic development needs natural resources, but no one seems to have an answer as to what to do when the forests are gone. 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 was cleaned up for weeks. Protesting peasants and the homeless were packed off to a camp far outside Hanoi. Soldiers patrolled 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 discussions on Vietnam's future.
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