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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
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For weeks, while thousands of Catholic took part in peaceful prayer vigils in several towns, calling for the return of confiscated church property, the media was completely silent, he said. Then on Saturday, the media began to carry a series of negative reports of protestors who had placed a cross and a statue in the grounds of a former church property. |
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
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Police in Hanoi have launched a criminal investigation into a land dispute with the Catholic Church, while state-run media on Tuesday accused church leaders of abusing their power to incite followers to confront the communist government. Catholic parishioners and priests have been holding daily vigils for the past month at the site, a block away from St. Joseph's Cathedral in downtown Hanoi. They are praying, singing and holding candles while demanding the handing over of the land, which was taken by the government nearly four decades ago. |
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
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As Vietnam’s rapid economic expansion gathers pace, the country’s communist party leaders are having an increasingly difficult time maintaining their so-called "Third Way" model of economic development, where centrally planned strictures and market dynamics uncomfortably co-exist. The question merging over the transitional economy is whether, more than 20 years after the launch of market-oriented doi moi reforms, a new generation of political leaders has the political will to bury the country’s communist past and fully embrace market economics. |
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Friday, 25 January 2008 |
Do Nam Hai arrived several minutes later. He had a tan, round face and wore the pleated khaki pants and tucked-in polo shirt that in Vietnam signals time spent abroad. He walked confidently, but with some exaggeration--as if he were trying to convince himself and whoever might be watching that it was OK for him to be there."Are the police here?" I asked him.
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Thursday, 24 January 2008 |
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Thousands of workers at four factories in Ho Chi Minh City have gone on strike, Vietnamese press reported Thursday, joining 8,000 shoe factory workers who laid down their tools early this week, as inflation concerns sparked labor unrest in the country's largest city. The companies hit included Japanese-owned sewing machine manufacturer Juki, with 1,400 workers, and electronic parts manufacturer TTTI, with 1,000, according to the Vietnamese newspaper Ho Chi Minh City Law. The striking workers are demanding raises of up to 20 per cent. |
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Thursday, 24 January 2008 |
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Vietnam on Thursday protested a Taiwanese military flight to one of the disputed Spratly Islands, amid reports of a planned visit there by Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian. Taiwan on Monday for the first time sent a military aircraft, a C-130 transport plane, to one of the Spratly islands for a one-day return trip, a defense official in Taipei said Wednesday. |
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Thursday, 24 January 2008 |
The new ambassador from Vietnam grew defensive yesterday when asked about human rights in his country, which is still dominated by a Communist Party that jails opponents and represses dissent. Ambassador Le Cong Phung referred to the "old days of the black-white issue" in the United States, a reference to the tortuous path of race relations from slavery to the civil rights movement. He appealed for time for his own government to develop ways to deal with political disputes.
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Wednesday, 23 January 2008 |
Over the centuries, China and Vietnam have maintained a troubled relationship. Recent events suggest this relationship is about to enter another difficult period.
Late last year, China decided to establish an administrative district over the disputed Spratly islands, turning it into a new administrative district of Hainan province. This assertion of sovereignty provoked an emotional response in Hanoi and appeared to confirm long-held Vietnamese scepticism towards the 'peaceful rise' of China.
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Monday, 21 January 2008 |
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The British based Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has expressed “disappointment” that Vietnamese Christian lawyers Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan were not released after their appeal hearing at the Supreme People’s Court, but welcomed the reduction of their sentences. According to CSW, the pair were sentenced in May 2007 to prison terms of five years and four years respectively for “disseminating slanderous and libelous information against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 88 of the nation’s Criminal Code. Both sentences were cut by one year following the appeal hearing on Thursday, January 10. |
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Saturday, 19 January 2008 |
The fact that the first hopeful woman democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shed tears in the aftermath of her loss at the Iowa primary to rival Barack Obama (January 7th), and on the eve of the New Hampshire primary (January 8th), has been commented on, analyzed and even psycho-analyzed in various circles all over the world.
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Friday, 18 January 2008 |
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Before an audience of enrapt young ethnic-Vietnamese pro-democracy advocates, the political dissident spelled out his movement's non-violent strategy for undermining Vietnam's ruling Communist Party's pillars of political power. Behind the speaker hung conspicuously the red-and-gold striped flag of the former South Vietnam, a still potent symbol for the country's post-1975 diaspora. So potent, in fact, Vietnamese diplomats requested on January 5 that Malaysian officials remove the flag from the civil society-promoting conference, which assembled 200 ethnic-Vietnamese youth from around the world, including from Vietnam. |
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Wednesday, 16 January 2008 |
 Authorities in the Vietnamese capital have told Catholics to stop mass prayer vigils demanding the return of church land seized in the 1950s, a Catholic news website said Wednesday. For almost a month, thousands of faithful have held prayer vigils in and around Hanoi, representing the faith's largest challenge so far to the communist government. Vietnam, a former French colony, has Southeast Asia's largest Catholic community after the Philippines -- about six million out of 84 million people. |
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Tuesday, 15 January 2008 |
 China and Vietnam top many lists at the U.S. Department of State and the United Nations: human-rights abusers, global polluters of immense proportions, and leaders in putting economics before protection of their vast populations who live without freedom of speech, free media, fair and open elections and other rights most peoples take for granted. |
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Tuesday, 15 January 2008 |
 After Hanoi and Hồ Chí Minh City, protests have reached Hà Ðông, a city with about 200,000 residents located some 40 kilometres from the Vietnamese capital. Here Catholics have peacefully protested demanding the return of their parish building which the authorities illegally seized claiming that it had been donated. The protest began 6 January and since then has seen hundreds of faithful meeting in front of what was once their parish building to pray for justice to be done. |
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Tuesday, 15 January 2008 |
 Most people would agree that nothing in life is free — including the obtaining or upholding of press freedom. This basic truth was uttered by one conference participant who hailed from a Southeast Asian country. An obvious example comes from the conference host: Cambodia itself. Due to a weak judicial system and law enforcement in Cambodia, the establishment of a press council to assist journalists in avoiding legal lawsuits was a necessity. |
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Sunday, 13 January 2008 |
 In the endless, general discussions of international diplomacy, sometimes, it seems, absolutely nothing is accomplished. For that reason, we urge U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who travels to Vietnam this week, to make a commitment to free Le Thi Cong Nhan, a young Ho Chi Minh City attorney in a communist Vietnam jail. |
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Friday, 11 January 2008 |
 Nationalistic street demonstrations in Vietnam last month over a long-running island dispute with China have tested the limits of protest in the one-party ruled state, as myriad political interests weighed in. Political analysts said the protests outside Beijing's diplomatic missions over ownership of South China Sea islands may suit Hanoi, which is historically wary of the giant neighbour meddling in sea lanes along Vietnam's 3,200 km (1,900 mile) coast. |
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Thursday, 10 January 2008 |
 The Vietnamese prison system employs prisoner forced labor to generate profits. In 2007, tons of cashew nuts were imported to the U.S , as well as various seafood products, much of which was generated from labor exploitation of political prisoners. The practice of forced labor is not only against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C 1307), section 307 but also violates the U.S. core of labor standards.(1) |
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Tuesday, 08 January 2008 |
 A Vietnamese government regulation on trading and distribution violates the country's commitments as part of its accession a year ago to the World Trade Organization, a U.S. business group said. ``Recently the entry into effect of a circular regulating trading and distribution activities has raised serious concerns,'' the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam said in a position paper distributed yesterday by e-mail by the group's Ho Chi Minh City branch. |
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Sunday, 06 January 2008 |
 Hundreds of Vietnamese Catholic Christians held prayer vigils in the capital at the weekend, the latest in a series asking for the return of church land seized by the communists half a century ago. Priests and Catholic followers lit candles, placed flowers and sang at the iron fence around a property near Hanoi's central St Joseph's Cathedral after Saturday prayers and Sunday masses. They say the large French-colonial villa and the 1.1 hectares (2.7 acre) it sits on are the former office of the Vatican's delegate to Hanoi, confiscated by the state when he was expelled in the late 1950s. |
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