Tensions Rise as Police Question Monk's Followers

HANOI, Vietnam — Followers of an internationally known Buddhist monk say tensions are rising at a monastery in Vietnam's Central Highlands after local officials accused them of trying to "sabotage" Vietnam's communist government.

An angry crowd gathered outside the Bat Nha monastery on Monday and local police conducted late-night searches of the rooms, said Brother Phap Tu, speaking by telephone Tuesday from the compound in Lam Dong province.

About 20 people, some carrying knives, pressured the monks to leave, ripped their clothing from a line and tossed it into a nearby river, Tu said. A few days before that, the group smashed the windows of the meditation hall, he said.

Late Monday night, police searched the dormitory rooms of the nearly 400 monastery residents and took the identity cards of two monks, ordering them to attend a meeting with local government officials on Tuesday morning, Tu said.

Calls to the area's police chief and local officials went unanswered Tuesday.

The monks and nuns are followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, an exiled Vietnam-born monk who has sold more than 1 million English-books in the West and is now based at the Plum Village monastery in southern France. Nhat Hanh has visited Vietnam three times since 2005, but remains based in southern France at the Plum Village monastery and is currently not in Vietnam.

His followers say they are being punished because Nhat Hanh has suggested that Vietnam's communist government should abolish its control of religion.

Authorities describe the conflict as an internal dispute between two factions of monks. They say they are simply acting at the request of the monastery's owner, Duc Nghi, a member of the official Buddhist Church of Vietnam who invited Nhat Hanh's followers to settle at the pagoda in 2005 but changed his mind last year.

Nghi could not be reached for comment.

The tensions first boiled over last June, when a mob descended on the site with sledgehammers, damaged buildings and threatened the monks and nuns who follow Nhat Hanh. Authorities also cut off electricity at the site.

Authorities later decided to allow the monks to stay until Sept. 2, but they declined to leave, saying they have no place to go and have spent nearly $1 million expanding the property and adding buildings.

The deadline passed without incident.

AP

Vietnam teeters towards a currency crisis

The Vietnamese currency, the dong, could face a significant devaluation, given worsening macroeconomic conditions and deteriorating financial fundamentals. The country has traditionally run large fiscal and trade deficits financed by foreign inflows, but there are growing signs that the imbalances are no longer sustainable.

The roots of the present crisis date to late 2007 and early 2008, when Vietnamese authorities lost control of their money supply. Authorities mismanaged the influx of US dollars into the economy by printing excessively more dong, forgetting the technocratic rule about sterilizing currency inflows by soaking up excess liquidity.

Inflation predictably accelerated, roaring ahead at nearly 30% by mid-2008, and Hanoi responded by increasing short-term interest rates, implementing price controls and announcing cutbacks in "inefficient" government spending. The country was saved from runaway inflation by the global financial meltdown in late 2008, which depressed global commodity prices and demand.

Almost overnight Vietnam went from an economy that was too hot to one that was too cold. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in response announced a large fiscal stimulus program - ironically reinstating large infrastructure projects that just months before were considered too wasteful and had to be chopped.

Most governments also ramped up spending to stimulate their domestic economies, but Vietnam faces technical and political constraints on its ability to efficiently pump-prime. Hanoi's fiscal deficit, estimated by Fitch Ratings at a large 9.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), must be financed somehow.

Apart from more foreign donor aid, the main traditional avenue is to issue more government debt. But the Vietnamese government has failed to sell any bonds in five consecutive public auctions between March and July this year. Local investors opted against purchasing notes at 9% interest rates, underscoring widespread pessimism about future inflation risks.

In the most recent bond auction, in late August, Vietnam's Treasury managed to raise just US$57 million out of a hoped for $150 million. Government debt plays a vital role in pricing corporate and consumer borrowings, and without an orderly government bond market, global experience shows that capital markets often grind to a halt.

Unable to raise capital through bond issuances, Hanoi will probably aim to unload its debt onto private and state-owned financial institutions, sowing the seeds for a future banking crisis. At the moment, Vietnam cannot access outside debt markets: earlier plans for an international bond issue were shelved indefinitely after rating agencies downgraded Vietnam's credit to junk status, on par with the likes of Serbia and Kenya.

Few will be surprised if Hanoi decides to ramp up the monetary printing presses to close its huge budget gap. The World Bank says it doesn't know exactly how much the Vietnamese government is spending because of a lack of official transparency, but that it is "too large compared with the financing resources available".

Lack of transparency
Vietnam's precarious fiscal position is compounded by a large and volatile trade deficit. According to a recent Standard Chartered Bank forecast, imports will outrun exports by some $7 billion this year, representing nearly 10% of GDP. This, too, has potentially grave implications for the future value of the Vietnamese dong.

The country's main sources of foreign exchange are exports, foreign direct investment, remittances from overseas Vietnamese and donor aid. With the global downturn, all of these income sources - with the notable exception of donor flows - have drastically fallen off. Local newspapers now report a widespread shortage of dollars for business transactions.

Because Hanoi treats information about its foreign reserve levels as a state secret, investors can only guess at how much is in the national coffers to defend the dong against speculative attack. Foreign reserves have probably fallen $17.6 billion by June 2009 from $23 billion at the end of 2008, according to Citibank.

All of these factors - unsustainable government deficit, reduced foreign inflows, and a lack of transparency - have led to a steady fall in the dong. The exchange rate is at around 18,300 dong per US dollar, which is at the upper end of the trading band set by the central bank. Many Vietnamese individuals and firms are known to be hoarding their dollars or dealing in the black market, where the rates are north of 19,000, higher than allowed by the government.

The official line is that there will be no devaluation of the dong. Indeed, the central bank has sold dollars to prop up the dong, but it's unclear how long it can sustain the interventions before its limited foreign currency reserves are exhausted. By maintaining the currency at an unrealistically strong exchange rate and ignoring the underlying financial imbalances, authorities are by the day increasing the likelihood of a currency collapse.

It is possible that the government is unsure about how to handle its exchange rate policy. Former central bank governor Le Duc Thuy, who advises the prime minister, was quoted in an interview on September 16 recommending a slight devaluation of the local unit. The following day, when asked whether the central bank planned to depreciate the currency, current governor Nguyen Van Giau insisted that the dong would be managed "with flexibility, as normal".

Exchange-rate management is at the best of times a vexing technical challenge, particularly for a country in transition from a command to market-based economy. With maneuvering for the next Communist Party Congress underway, it is unlikely there will be any bold economic decisions from Hanoi in the foreseeable future. But many analysts believe that simply muddling through could be a recipe for disaster.

To compound those suspicions, the government has effectively banned groups in Vietnam from publishing research on economic issues. A new decree from the prime minister came into effect on September 15 limiting scientific and technical research to 317 specifically approved topics; macroeconomics is glaringly one of the subjects omitted from the list.

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Vietnam's only private think-tank, decided to disband in protest the day before the decree took effect. IDS gathered some of the country's most eminent economists and had suggested solutions to tackle the financial mess. With public debate on economic matters now forbidden, it is hard to see how the government will pursue well-informed policies to stabilize an accelerating crisis situation.

Duy Hoang

Closing Blog Was ‘Painful’

A well-known Vietnamese blogger said it was “painful” to quit her online writing, which had been critical of the government, but she agreed to stop so she could be released from detention.

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 31, who blogged as “Me Nam,” or “Mushroom's Mother,” was arrested Sept. 3. She was the last of three bloggers recently arrested and released for what the government says were legitimate national security reasons.

“They told me not to use that blog. They said that was a political plot by some Vietnamese… that that was what incited me,” she said. “I accepted everything so I could go home.”

“Stopping a blog is simple—you just close it,” she said. “But today when I had to announce that I won’t blog anymore, it was painful.”

Being in prison for “10 days and nine nights—it was terrible,” she said in an interview.

In her last blog posting, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh wrote a farewell letter to her readers.

In the entry, she explains that the hardship she endured in prison caused her to give up writing.

"Through what happened to me in the last few days, I painfully recognize that how we express patriotism still depends on the regime," she said.

"Participants…must abide by the rules of the game, and in my current position, I don’t have a choice."

Mining at issue

On 27 August, blogger Bui Thanh Hieu, also known as Nguoi Buon Gio, was arrested in Hanoi.

A day later journalist Pham Doan Trang, who worked for one of the most visited semi-official news Web sites, VietnamNet, was also arrested. She also ran a well-read personal blog.

All three opposed China's claims of sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, which Vietnam, among other governments, also claims.

They also criticized a government plan to partner with a Chinese state-owned firm to exploit bauxite reserves in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

Bauxite mining drew national attention last year when war hero Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap urged the government to reconsider it. Hanoi doesn’t want anti-China sentiments to get out of hand, and it tightly controls the country’s media.

Officials said “their plan to exploit bauxite is in the interest of the whole country, not of some individual group,” Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh said. “But I’m upset because this information isn’t open to the public.

She said she was questioned several times in July this year when she wore a T-shirt opposing the bauxite mine and asserting that the Spratly and Paracel islands belong to Vietnam.

Pledge to be ‘more subtle’

Bui Thanh Hieu, 37, the blogger also known as Nguoi Buon Gio or “Wind Trader,” was released Sept. 5.

He was arrested in late August after blogging critically about the planned bauxite mine and Vietnam’s disputed claim to islands in the South China Sea.

“I will continue reading blogs. I might continue writing, but I will write in a more subtle way. I will write in a way that is more suitable for my situation,” he said in an interview.

Police searched Hieu's house after his arrest and confiscated two of his computers and other personal belongings, the Free Journalists Network of Vietnam (FJNV), an independent press freedom group, said.

Pham Doan Trang, 31, was released Sept. 6 after being arrested in late August. Her blog, titled “Ridiculous,” covered the same topics.

Hanoi’s new watchdog

On Sept. 3, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the arrests and said in a statement that Trang had recently reported on territorial disputes with China.

It cited the FJNV as saying Trang also shared sensitive information with bloggers and other journalists about a Chinese advisor for economic and trade issues who called on his Vietnamese counterparts to discipline certain local newspapers and journalists.

The Vietnamese government created the Administration Agency for Radio, Television, and Electronics Information in 2008 and charged it with with monitoring the Internet and bloggers.

In recent months, authorities have blocked local access to Singapore-based Yahoo 360°, according to CPJ. The site was nearly exclusively popular with Vietnamese bloggers.

Yahoo recently introduced a new version of its service called Yahoo 360+, but many bloggers do not trust the site's privacy provisions and have moved to WordPress or social networking sites such as Facebook and Multiply.

RFA

Vietnam Seeks to Silence its China Critics

Bloggers and online journalists beware. Big Brother is watching

For vocal critics of the Chinese government, there's only one place where it's more dangerous to speak out than in mother China and that's Vietnam.

Although many Vietnamese remain highly suspicious of China, which ruled Vietnam for 1,000 years and launched a short but bloody border war against it in 1979, the Communist government has become increasingly nervous about criticism of its northern neighbor. The rationale for this crackdown is not communist solidarity or a new drive to stamp out xenophobia but cold, hard cash.

The global financial crisis has left Vietnam more dependent than ever on investment from China, its biggest trading partner. With the Chinese hyper-sensitive to any criticism, the Vietnamese government, which already ranks toward the bottom of most press freedom league tables, has intensified its crackdown on those who question the nature of China-Vietnam relations.

In the latest sweep by Vietnam's media police, two bloggers and an online journalist were arrested and detained for several days under suspicion of "abusing democratic freedoms" to undermine the state. Blogger Bui Thanh Hieu, who used the pen name "Nguoi Buon Gio" or "Wind Trader", journalist Pham Doan Trang, who works for popular news website VietnamNet and Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who blogged as "Me Nam" or "Mother Mushroom", had all written critically about Vietnam-China relations on the internet.

They were detained after police got wind of a small-scale plan to print tee-shirts bearing slogans that called for an end to controversial Chinese investment in a massive new bauxite mining project in the Central Highlands and rejected Chinese claims to sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Although the trio were eventually released earlier this month, their computers and other personal effects were seized and Quynh, who was detained for 10 days, said she was only let out after pledging to cease writing her blog.

These were just the latest in a continuing crackdown on those who have railed against the government's increasingly close relationship with China. A number of other journalists and writers were arrested or lost their jobs after openly criticizing China earlier this year.

The global financial crisis has forced many international companies to rethink their investments in riskier, emerging markets such as Vietnam – foreign direct investment fell by 82 percent to just US$10.4bn in the first eight months of the year, according to government figures. Vietnam's cash-strapped government has also found it hard to issue new bonds, with market yields above the level that the country can afford.

As a result, the Southeast Asian nation has become increasingly reliant on China. Vietnam runs a large trade deficit with its former conqueror and has been pushing China to increase investment in order to rebalance this relationship.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung traveled to China in April on a major trade mission, where he met Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and promised to make it easier for Chinese companies to do business in Vietnam.

This cozying-up to China has not gone down well with Vietnam's army of online patriots. But although distrust of China has a long history in Vietnam, bloggers and other commentators in Vietnam insist that the growing sense of unease at China's creeping involvement in their country is about much more than mere xenophobia.

Many fear that Vietnam has little to gain and much to lose from openings its doors to Chinese investment. They also worry that their government's reliance on Chinese money will lead to a softening of Vietnam's territorial claims to the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, which are believed to be surrounded by extensive oil and gas reserves.

Concerns have coalesced around the involvement of Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese mining group, in a large bauxite extraction project in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Critics ranging from monks to scientists and even war-hero General Vo Nguyen Giap have spoken out against the plan because of fears over national security and the poor environmental record of Chinese mining companies.

After Giap, who masterminded the defeat of the French and Americans in two successive wars, voiced his concerns publicly earlier this year, the government seemed to allow an unprecedented level of debate about such an important policy, even letting skeptical scientists hold a conference to discuss the mining project.

However, this "Hanoi spring" was sadly, if predictably, short-lived. The government may not have been in a position to silence 98-year-old Giap but it soon made it clear that it was not willing to countenance criticism of its key business partner from lowly bloggers or journalists.

The suppression of anti-Chinese voices has been part of a wider crackdown on dissent ahead of the all-important party congress in 2011, when Vietnam's top three political posts are likely to be reshuffled.

The government brought in new restrictions in December that make it illegal for bloggers to cover political issues or write under pseudonyms. The police have also arrested other perceived threats to national security such as Nguyen Xuan Nghia, a writer and pro-democracy campaigner, and Le Cong Dinh, a prominent human rights lawyer.

While the Vietnamese government maintains a tight grip over the more than 700 newspapers and magazines that are available on the newsstands of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, it has found it much more difficult to control the internet.

With some 21 million internet users and anywhere between one and four million blogs to police, Vietnam does not have the resources or technology to take the Chinese approach to internet censorship, rolling out extensive firewalls that block unsavory websites.

Instead, the media police prefer to take the kind of approach practiced by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, shaking down popular bloggers in the hope that it will have a chilling effect, making others afraid to discuss even vaguely controversial issues.

International press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters without Borders have condemned the latest arrests and warned that the increasing clampdown on free speech will harm the fight against corruption in Vietnam. But the government has dismissed these censures, with a foreign ministry spokesman insisting that the arrests were "consistent with the Vietnamese laws" and arguing that "some organizations and individuals have intentionally exaggerated and distorted this issue with ill intention."

Some dissidents believe that China effectively bought off the Vietnamese government by advancing them a secret $50bn bailout package during the height of the financial crisis when, they claim, Vietnam was on the brink of fiscal collapse.

There is no evidence for such conspiracy theories but, with Vietnam forced to turn to the Asian Development Bank this week for a $500m loan to supplement its unhealthy-looking budget, it is clear that the government is in no position to spurn China's advances.

Asia Sentinel

Vietnam's Triet urged to fulfill promises on reform

September 25, 2009

His Excellency Nguyen Minh Triet
President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
C/o the Permanent Mission of Vietnam
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 435
New York, NY 10017
Via facsimile: (212)-644-5732

Dear Mr. President:

It has been nearly three years since Vietnam was accepted into the World Trade Organization and your government announced its intention to play a more prominent role in international organizations and multilateral forums. Your participation in this week’s United Nations General Assembly and your country’s scheduled assumption next year of the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are testament to Vietnam’s more engaged approach to international relations.

Unfortunately, Vietnam’s more open diplomacy has not translated into substantive democratic reforms at home, including in the areas of press and Internet freedom. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, nonprofit organization that defends press freedom worldwide, was alarmed by your government’s recent crackdown on online journalists and political bloggers, many of whom were detained and interrogated for their reporting.

On August 28, your security forces arrested journalist Pham Doan Trang, a reporter with the popular online news site VietnamNet, for her reporting on territorial disputes between your country and China. Internet access to several of her stories on that topic, which the state-dominated and highly censored mainstream media have shied from reporting, was blocked by your government soon after her arrest.

That same week police arrested and detained political blogger Bui Thanh Hieu, who wrote under the pen name Nguoi Buon Gio, which in English translates to “Wind Trader.” He, too, had written critical commentaries about Vietnam-China relations, as well as your government’s handling of land disputes with the Catholic Church. Our sources said that police confiscated his computers and other personal belongings during the late-night raid on his house.

Truong Huy San, a newspaper reporter who under the pen name Huy Duc maintained a popular blog known as Osin, was dismissed on August 24 from the government-run Saigon Tiep Thi (Saigon Marketing) soon after he had published criticism of the former Soviet Union’s crimes against humanity. It was lost on few observers that the Soviet Union was a key ally to your Communist Party-run government during the Cold War.

As part of your government’s repressive crackdown on Internet freedom, at least two other political bloggers, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who wrote as “Me Nam,” or Mother Mushroom, and another known simply as Sphinx, were temporarily detained and interrogated for their postings related to Vietnam-China relations. While all of the above named journalists have since been released, their arrests have underscored your government’s reputation as one of the world’s worst violators of Internet freedom.

Earlier this year CPJ ranked Vietnam as one of the 10 worst places in the world to be a blogger. Our assessment stemmed in part from the jailing last year of popular blogger Nguyen Van Hai, who wrote under the name Dieu Cay, which translates to “Peasant’s Pipe” in English. Hai, who had also raised critical questions about your country’s relations with China, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on what CPJ considers trumped-up tax evasion charges. Vietnam’s poor ranking was also based on your government’s creation last October of the new Administration Agency for Radio, Television and Electronics Information, a state unit tasked specifically with monitoring the Internet for postings that could be considered critical of your government’s policies. We are currently investigating what role the new agency may have had in your recent crackdown.

Mr. President, your government had indicated it would show greater respect for basic human rights in your negotiations with the World Trade Organization that finally facilitated your entry into the WTO. Three years later, in regard to respecting and promoting greater press freedom, it is plain to see that your government has not upheld its end of the bargain.

Vietnam has increasingly found its place on the world stage, but its anti-democratic tendencies have cast it more as an authoritarian onlooker than reliable participant. One way to change that distinction and improve your country’s image in the international community would be through a new commitment to press and Internet freedom.

Thank you for your attention to this letter. We look forward to your reply.

Joel Simon
Executive Director

Vietnam 'making a mockery' of rights obligations, says Human Rights Watch

VIETNAM is making a mockery of its obligations under the UN Human Rights Council, an international rights group said.

The communist country has rejected a raft of recommendations to improve its rights record raised during a periodic review by the UN Human Rights Council that ended this week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.

"Vietnam - a member of the UN Security Council - has made a mockery of its engagement at the UN Human Rights Council," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of the New York-based organisation.

"Vietnam rejected even the most benign recommendations based on the international covenants it has signed, such as allowing people to promote human rights or express their opinions."

Hanoi rejected 45 recommendations from UN member states, HRW said, including lifting internet and blogging controls on privately owned media, allowing groups and individuals to promote human rights, abolishing the death penalty and releasing peaceful prisoners of conscience.

Of the 93 recommendations accepted by the Vietnamese Government, many consisted only of broad statements of intent to "consider" proposals by member states, HRW said.

"Shockingly, Vietnam denied to the Human Rights Council that it has arrested and imprisoned hundreds of peaceful dissidents and independent religious activists," said Ms Pearson.

"Yet in just the four months since Vietnam's last appearance at the council, it has arrested scores more."

Vietnam said during the Human Rights Council review process that it had no "so-called 'prisoners of conscience'", that no one was arrested for criticising the Government and denied torturing offenders.

"Like China, Vietnam has rebuffed the Human Rights Council in an effort to sanitise its abysmal rights record," said Ms Pearson.

"The UN's rights review offers proof to the world that despite international concern, Vietnam has no real intention of improving its record."

The UN Human Rights Council made its recommendations after one of its regular examinations of a state's human rights records.

More than 10 people have been arrested recently in Vietnam for spreading "propaganda against the state". HRW highlighted the case of Huynh Ba, a land rights activist and member of the Khmer Krom ethnic minority who led protests by farmers in the Mekong Delta over confiscation of their land who was arrested on May 30.

More than 1000 members of the largely Christian Montagnards community fled to Cambodia after security forces put down demonstrations in the Central Highlands in 2001 against land confiscation and religious persecution.

Vietnam has strongly denied a 2006 accusation by Human Rights Watch that it detained and tortured Montagnards who returned home under a tripartite agreement after fleeing to Cambodia.

The Australian