Up until now, civil society protests in Vietnam have been limited to quality of life issues, or patriotic defense of South China Sea sovereignty issues. A massive fish kill in Phu Loc has spawned something more profound
What started off as an alarming but manageable environmental event a bit more than a month ago, something that might have been solved by a public apology and a big fine, has morphed into an acutely embarrassing circumstance for the prime minister. In Vietnam’s new regime, the party machinery has reasserted its primacy and mere prime ministers are disposable. The regime’s decision to amp up police repression of popular demonstrations is of greater import. So is Hanoi’s obvious disinclination to put Formosa Ha Tinh Steel in the dock. Yes, Vietnam has worked hard and successfully to market itself as a stable, low wage location for foreign investors. That doesn’t mean that Hanoi ought not hold foreign investors to account when something goes wildly wrong.
By Sunday evening, first person accounts were lighting up Facebook. Blogger Lang Anh posted a photo of a woman whose child, she said, witnessed police beating her mother. According to the blogger, “She was attacked only because she expressed her wish that her child might live in a nation that’s cleaner and, for everyone, more stable. Hoping to be heard, they marched peacefully, but were violently repressed.”
Moreover, the true root causes of the disaster are deep and numerous. While the fish die-off in these four coastal provinces is an unprecedented phenomenon in Vietnam, the mass fish kill has occurred in other places in the country. For instance, tons of farm-raised fish in Bach Lang River and Buoi River in the central province of Thanh Hoa have died in the last few days. The severe contamination of these rivers caused by factories’ unprocessed waste water is identified as the primary cause of this mass fish death.
To deal with these environmental disasters, the Vietnamese government must reconsider its development policy. It can no longer industrialize at all costs because the country will pay heavy environmental prices for such a careless and irresponsible industrialization.Furthermore, in a way, like its coastal seas and rivers, Vietnam’s political environment is also severely polluted and corrupted.
Though the scale of this disaster was evident to everyone in the region, the media didn’t pick up on the story until mid-April, and the government took even longer to respond. By this time news of the dead fish had spread throughout the country on Facebook and other social media sites, which are widely used and outside of the state-censored national media.
People were angry and Formosa’s flippant reaction only made matters worse. On April 25 Chou Chun Fan, Formosa Ha Tinh’s public relations director, told Vietnamese villagers that they had to choose between having fish and a modern steel industry. It wasn’t possible to have both, he is reported as saying.
Fan was quickly fired and his bosses apologised for the remark, but the damage was already done. The phrase toi chon ca (I choose fish), became a rallying hashtag on social media as members of the public blasted Formosa for its disregard for the environment.
These fish kill protests are some of the biggest Vietnam has seen in its major cities in recent years and were attended by more than the politically motivated. Across the board, the population has been horrified by so many tonnes of fish washing up on already polluted beaches (newspapers and commentators have noted a certain cognitive dissonance in the anger at a foreign company when beaches are regularly trashed by local tourists).
Foreign investment and corruption are twin challenges for the government. General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong committed to continuing Vietnam's reforms when he retained the top post in the new government that was ushered in by the January national congress. At that time, the emphasis was on fighting corruption, reforming state-owned enterprises, and bringing the country in line with TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) commitments of transparency and rule of law. Making sure foreign investors observed environmental guidelines was not on the agenda. Reform is touted as a way to entice foreign investment; ignoring your own environmental laws is not but seems to have worked too, to the anger of the population.
Government transparency in solving problems and laying blame where it may be due has also remained a non-issue for the ruling party, publicly at least.
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