http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmrBYERz0y0
Showing posts with label South Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Vietnam. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Nguyen Cao Ky, South Vietnam Leader, Dies at 80
 |
| Nguyen Cao Ky in 1965, the year he became prime minister. (Associated Press) |
July 23, 2011
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant former South Vietnamese Air Force commander who served for two years as his country’s wartime leader, then fled to the United States when Saigon fell to the Communists, died Saturday at the age of 80.
Mr. Ky died at a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he was being treated for a respiratory infection, a nephew, Peter Phan, told The Associated Press.
After serving in both the Communist and French colonial armies, he rose through the ranks of South Vietnam’s fledgling air force, then led Vietnam as prime minister from 1965 to 1967 before serving as vice president under his bitter rival, Nguyen Van Thieu.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
35 years after fall of Saigon
April 28, 2010By Richard Botkin
WorldNetDaily
Thirty five years ago this Friday, the final chapter to the American portion of the Vietnam War was ingloriously concluded – even though American combat forces were largely gone by late 1971 and all remaining support troops, air crews and POWs were home in early 1973. Unlike Dec. 7, 1941, or June 6, 1944, or Aug. 15, 1945 (Victory over Japan Day), or any other notable day from World War II, April 30, 1975, will never be recalled in positive ways by those old enough to remember or those too young whose ideas have instead been shaped by contemporary media.
For the more than three million American servicemen who honorably served in Southeast Asia between 1964 and 1973, there were no tumultuous homecoming parades, no victory celebrations in Times Square or any town square – nothing. For the remaining 200 million Americans alive then who did not go to Vietnam, the war was mostly a vicarious, unpleasant inconvenience. Where Americans might recall this day in 1975, if they recall it at all, they are likely to conjure tension-filled images of action at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, of Marines attempting to impose order from chaos, of throngs of Vietnamese clamoring to get aboard already overcrowded helicopters hoping to leave ahead of the invading communists, some of those same helicopters later being pushed over the sides of U.S. Navy ships, of barely seaworthy, ramshackle hobo freighters packed to the gunwales with star-crossed refugees steaming well in trace of the American armada. As negative as it all seemed, as bad as the day was, at least the bad dream that was, for Americans, the Vietnam "experience" was ending. Time to move on.
For the left-behind 17 million citizens of the Republic of Vietnam, which ceased to exist the moment the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet retired over the eastern horizon, memories of that day are far different. While April 30, 1975, really did signal the conclusion of American involvement, all that changed for our discarded former allies was the manner of struggle and degree of difficulty. There would be no moving on. The new communist masters would impose a different kind of peace. It would be peace with retribution, peace with subjugation, peace with no forgiveness and peace with maximum pain.
America's investment in Vietnam was significant. Aside from the tens of billions of dollars spent to fight the war, 58,000 men paid the ultimate price. Several times that number were wounded, and every man who endured combat has been marked forever by that experience.
While Americans have spent liberally and invested tremendous amounts of blood and sweat and treasure in the defense of freedom around the world, there is still that solipsistic sense, even today, perhaps especially today, that liberty is somehow an American concept and not everyone is ready to enjoy its blessings. Underappreciated is the fact that a high percentage of people who live under totalitarian rule, if given opportunity, will risk everything to seek and gain the freedoms most of us so casually take for granted.
As Richard Nixon observed in a speech given long after his retirement: "No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then. It is misremembered now." Arguably, most misreported and most misremembered is the post-Tet of 1968 time period of the war and the media treatment of the Vietnamese effort to fight their own battles as the American drawdown continued. Misremembered and misreported are the facts that our Vietnamese allies, with the assistance of American airpower, had largely defeated the northern invaders during the Easter Offensive of 1972. Snatched from the jaws of victory, American negotiators traded away hard-fought battlefield gains for empty communist promises while Congress later turned the fiscal screws to our allies when victory, or at least freedom from northern domination, might have been theirs.
The South Vietnamese paid an especially heavy price for being the American lapdogs and lackeys they were accused of being by many in the media, the northern communists and anti-war American college students. In the military of the Republic of Vietnam, more than 220,000 men were killed in action and more than a million were wounded. Civilians, of course, paid an even higher price with more than 1.5 million killed – the highest percentages killed by the communists during their final invasion in 1975. The number of wounded and displaced civilians, many times the number killed, will never be accurately assessed.
Where American expenditure of blood and treasure in Vietnam ended on April 30, 1975, for our ex-allies the nightmare had only begun. No records of the calculated retribution have been made public – even though some probably exist as the communists are known to be fastidious record keepers – but once the freedom genie was brutally forced back into her bottle, the paybacks began immediately and in earnest. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens, of the millions already displaced, before they had opportunity to attempt escape were consigned to Stalinist reeducation camps where many died horrible painful, slow, lonely deaths. Those who managed to survive will carry those scars to their graves.
In a 2,000-year-old village-centric and ancestor-venerating culture, it is not possible to quantify or overstate the pain of the northern conquest. The second major exodus of Vietnamese citizens within a single generation was set to begin. (In 1954 with the partitioning of Vietnam into North and South, more than 1 million northerners – about 6 percent of the population there –moved south to escape from the communists. Only a handful of the most hard-core communists moved from the South to the North.) Between 1975 and 1990 it is estimated that more than 3 million of the remaining 17 million South Vietnamese – more than one in six citizens – became "boat people" in this second diaspora. Of those who risked the high seas in anything that would float to gain their freedom, it is believed that as many as 25 percent perished. For those who made it to friendly shores, stories of rape, murder, pillage and even cannibalism perpetrated by the ubiquitous pirates are so common as to be almost the norm.
With all the pain and suffering the war in Vietnam caused, it is important to focus on the gain, and gain there was. The American and free-Vietnamese effort in Vietnam, however flawed the outcome, did buy time for the rest of Asia's economies to grow free of the communist threat. The dominoes were kept upright. Lee Kwan Yew, founding prime minister of Singapore, was perhaps most strident in his observations at the conclusion of the Vietnam War: "It was the Americans who stopped the Chinese and Vietnamese communists from spreading insurgency into Cambodia and Thailand … Because Americans were resolutely anti-communist and prepared to confront them, Nehru, Nasser and Sukarno could afford to be nonaligned."
Vigorous free-market economies throughout all of Asia today, in part, owe their successes to the American and free-Vietnamese blood investment that blunted what otherwise then might have been an unstoppable communist juggernaut. Investors the world over who now, without a thought, profitably invest billions in the emerging markets might ponder what the face of Asia would look like had Americans not shown up in force in the 1960s to stand beside a people who really were hoping to live outside of communist domination.
For the Vietnamese living in free countries who paid significantly for their freedom, there is no way to wipe away the pain endured. While never to be excused or forgotten, there is little positive emotion invested in self-pity or victimhood. For the American Vietnamese community, success is the best revenge. The unintended consequence of the Vietnamese loss and their ultimate migration has become their new country's gain. In California, where there are large Vietnamese populations, one can visit any of the several U.C. campuses to find young Vietnamese men and women over represented in every professional school and program. It is said that the two million Vietnamese in the United States have a greater combined income than what is produced in the entire country of Vietnam.
On this upcoming 35th anniversary of our end to that war, we must honor our dead – American and South Vietnamese – and those left among us who nobly served. We must recall that freedom has a tremendous price which is nearly always unevenly borne, and celebrate all that was right with our effort to advance its cause.
The true history, the final history, the not-misremembered or misreported history of the Vietnam War remains to be learned by most. That victory might have been attained is a lesson requiring further and ongoing study. From the left we have heard: "No more Vietnams." From the right, we must answer in kind: "No more Vietnams."
For the more than three million American servicemen who honorably served in Southeast Asia between 1964 and 1973, there were no tumultuous homecoming parades, no victory celebrations in Times Square or any town square – nothing. For the remaining 200 million Americans alive then who did not go to Vietnam, the war was mostly a vicarious, unpleasant inconvenience. Where Americans might recall this day in 1975, if they recall it at all, they are likely to conjure tension-filled images of action at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, of Marines attempting to impose order from chaos, of throngs of Vietnamese clamoring to get aboard already overcrowded helicopters hoping to leave ahead of the invading communists, some of those same helicopters later being pushed over the sides of U.S. Navy ships, of barely seaworthy, ramshackle hobo freighters packed to the gunwales with star-crossed refugees steaming well in trace of the American armada. As negative as it all seemed, as bad as the day was, at least the bad dream that was, for Americans, the Vietnam "experience" was ending. Time to move on.
For the left-behind 17 million citizens of the Republic of Vietnam, which ceased to exist the moment the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet retired over the eastern horizon, memories of that day are far different. While April 30, 1975, really did signal the conclusion of American involvement, all that changed for our discarded former allies was the manner of struggle and degree of difficulty. There would be no moving on. The new communist masters would impose a different kind of peace. It would be peace with retribution, peace with subjugation, peace with no forgiveness and peace with maximum pain.
America's investment in Vietnam was significant. Aside from the tens of billions of dollars spent to fight the war, 58,000 men paid the ultimate price. Several times that number were wounded, and every man who endured combat has been marked forever by that experience.
While Americans have spent liberally and invested tremendous amounts of blood and sweat and treasure in the defense of freedom around the world, there is still that solipsistic sense, even today, perhaps especially today, that liberty is somehow an American concept and not everyone is ready to enjoy its blessings. Underappreciated is the fact that a high percentage of people who live under totalitarian rule, if given opportunity, will risk everything to seek and gain the freedoms most of us so casually take for granted.
As Richard Nixon observed in a speech given long after his retirement: "No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then. It is misremembered now." Arguably, most misreported and most misremembered is the post-Tet of 1968 time period of the war and the media treatment of the Vietnamese effort to fight their own battles as the American drawdown continued. Misremembered and misreported are the facts that our Vietnamese allies, with the assistance of American airpower, had largely defeated the northern invaders during the Easter Offensive of 1972. Snatched from the jaws of victory, American negotiators traded away hard-fought battlefield gains for empty communist promises while Congress later turned the fiscal screws to our allies when victory, or at least freedom from northern domination, might have been theirs.
The South Vietnamese paid an especially heavy price for being the American lapdogs and lackeys they were accused of being by many in the media, the northern communists and anti-war American college students. In the military of the Republic of Vietnam, more than 220,000 men were killed in action and more than a million were wounded. Civilians, of course, paid an even higher price with more than 1.5 million killed – the highest percentages killed by the communists during their final invasion in 1975. The number of wounded and displaced civilians, many times the number killed, will never be accurately assessed.
Where American expenditure of blood and treasure in Vietnam ended on April 30, 1975, for our ex-allies the nightmare had only begun. No records of the calculated retribution have been made public – even though some probably exist as the communists are known to be fastidious record keepers – but once the freedom genie was brutally forced back into her bottle, the paybacks began immediately and in earnest. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens, of the millions already displaced, before they had opportunity to attempt escape were consigned to Stalinist reeducation camps where many died horrible painful, slow, lonely deaths. Those who managed to survive will carry those scars to their graves.
In a 2,000-year-old village-centric and ancestor-venerating culture, it is not possible to quantify or overstate the pain of the northern conquest. The second major exodus of Vietnamese citizens within a single generation was set to begin. (In 1954 with the partitioning of Vietnam into North and South, more than 1 million northerners – about 6 percent of the population there –moved south to escape from the communists. Only a handful of the most hard-core communists moved from the South to the North.) Between 1975 and 1990 it is estimated that more than 3 million of the remaining 17 million South Vietnamese – more than one in six citizens – became "boat people" in this second diaspora. Of those who risked the high seas in anything that would float to gain their freedom, it is believed that as many as 25 percent perished. For those who made it to friendly shores, stories of rape, murder, pillage and even cannibalism perpetrated by the ubiquitous pirates are so common as to be almost the norm.
With all the pain and suffering the war in Vietnam caused, it is important to focus on the gain, and gain there was. The American and free-Vietnamese effort in Vietnam, however flawed the outcome, did buy time for the rest of Asia's economies to grow free of the communist threat. The dominoes were kept upright. Lee Kwan Yew, founding prime minister of Singapore, was perhaps most strident in his observations at the conclusion of the Vietnam War: "It was the Americans who stopped the Chinese and Vietnamese communists from spreading insurgency into Cambodia and Thailand … Because Americans were resolutely anti-communist and prepared to confront them, Nehru, Nasser and Sukarno could afford to be nonaligned."
Vigorous free-market economies throughout all of Asia today, in part, owe their successes to the American and free-Vietnamese blood investment that blunted what otherwise then might have been an unstoppable communist juggernaut. Investors the world over who now, without a thought, profitably invest billions in the emerging markets might ponder what the face of Asia would look like had Americans not shown up in force in the 1960s to stand beside a people who really were hoping to live outside of communist domination.
For the Vietnamese living in free countries who paid significantly for their freedom, there is no way to wipe away the pain endured. While never to be excused or forgotten, there is little positive emotion invested in self-pity or victimhood. For the American Vietnamese community, success is the best revenge. The unintended consequence of the Vietnamese loss and their ultimate migration has become their new country's gain. In California, where there are large Vietnamese populations, one can visit any of the several U.C. campuses to find young Vietnamese men and women over represented in every professional school and program. It is said that the two million Vietnamese in the United States have a greater combined income than what is produced in the entire country of Vietnam.
On this upcoming 35th anniversary of our end to that war, we must honor our dead – American and South Vietnamese – and those left among us who nobly served. We must recall that freedom has a tremendous price which is nearly always unevenly borne, and celebrate all that was right with our effort to advance its cause.
The true history, the final history, the not-misremembered or misreported history of the Vietnam War remains to be learned by most. That victory might have been attained is a lesson requiring further and ongoing study. From the left we have heard: "No more Vietnams." From the right, we must answer in kind: "No more Vietnams."
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Nixon vowed to 'cut off head' of South Vietnam leader
Republican President Richard Nixon gesturing during a press conference announcing the entry of American soldiers in Cambodia, on April 30, 1970.Thursday, 25th June 2009
AFP
Despite pledges to protect South Vietnam, former US President Richard Nixon privately vowed to "cut off the head" of its leader unless he backed peace with the communist North, tapes released showed.
The tapes appear to confirm charges by South Vietnam's late president, Nguyen Van Thieu, who tearfully accused the US of breaking its word to protect Saigon when the southern capital fell in 1975.
The National Archives released more than 150 hours of new tapes from Mr Nixon, who notoriously recorded his conversations. Mr Nixon is heard railing against the media and Congress for allegedly undercutting the war effort in Vietnam.
Hours before his second inauguration in January 1973, Mr Nixon telephoned top aide Henry Kissinger and urged him to press Mr Thieu to back the Paris Peace Accords which ended most US military involvement in Vietnam.
Mr Nixon asked Mr Kissinger to tell the South Vietnamese - truthfully or not - that the US Congress would cut off aid to the Saigon government unless it supported the accords.
"I don't know whether that threat goes far enough or not but I'd do any damn thing that is - or cut off his head if necessary," said Mr Nixon.
Mr Kissinger indicated it would be easy to strong-arm South Vietnam's foreign minister, Tran Van Lam, who was in the French capital for the talks.
"The foreign minister is an ass and he won't be able to do anything," said Mr Kissinger, then Mr Nixon's national security adviser, who sealed the agreement in Paris three days later with top diplomats from the two Vietnams.
But Mr Nixon met the foreign minister later that month at the White House and promised to do "everything that we can" to assist South Vietnam, according to another tape released on Tuesday.
"Your independence - your ability to keep the communists (inaudible), your ability to keep South Vietnam under your control, the opportunity to have an international agreement of their own choice - this for me is very important," added Mr Nixon.
"The main thing to remember: We know who our friends are," said Mr Nixon.
North Vietnamese troops seized Saigon in 1975, after Mr Nixon had resigned in the Watergate scandal.
Mr Thieu in a bitter farewell address called the US an "inhumane ally," saying the Nixon team forced him to sign the Paris Peace Accords under false promises it would still defend South Vietnam.
Ken Hughes, a Nixon expert at the University of Virginia's Presidential Recordings Project, said the tapes showed that Mr Nixon was "very duplicitous" with the South Vietnamese.
Mr Nixon believed the communists would eventually triumph but could not end the war before his re-election and even afterward wanted the South to sign on to the Paris Peace Accords to provide political cover, said Mr Hughes.
"If Mr Nixon had cut off US aid to South Vietnam in 1973, the entire nation would have realised that after having added four years and 20,000 American casualties to the war, he had gotten nothing," remarked Mr Hughes.
"Mr Nixon wanted the settlement because it would put a year or two between his final withdrawal and the communists' final victory. That would make it look like South Vietnam's destruction was its own fault," he said.
The tapes appear to confirm charges by South Vietnam's late president, Nguyen Van Thieu, who tearfully accused the US of breaking its word to protect Saigon when the southern capital fell in 1975.
The National Archives released more than 150 hours of new tapes from Mr Nixon, who notoriously recorded his conversations. Mr Nixon is heard railing against the media and Congress for allegedly undercutting the war effort in Vietnam.
Hours before his second inauguration in January 1973, Mr Nixon telephoned top aide Henry Kissinger and urged him to press Mr Thieu to back the Paris Peace Accords which ended most US military involvement in Vietnam.
Mr Nixon asked Mr Kissinger to tell the South Vietnamese - truthfully or not - that the US Congress would cut off aid to the Saigon government unless it supported the accords.
"I don't know whether that threat goes far enough or not but I'd do any damn thing that is - or cut off his head if necessary," said Mr Nixon.
Mr Kissinger indicated it would be easy to strong-arm South Vietnam's foreign minister, Tran Van Lam, who was in the French capital for the talks.
"The foreign minister is an ass and he won't be able to do anything," said Mr Kissinger, then Mr Nixon's national security adviser, who sealed the agreement in Paris three days later with top diplomats from the two Vietnams.
But Mr Nixon met the foreign minister later that month at the White House and promised to do "everything that we can" to assist South Vietnam, according to another tape released on Tuesday.
"Your independence - your ability to keep the communists (inaudible), your ability to keep South Vietnam under your control, the opportunity to have an international agreement of their own choice - this for me is very important," added Mr Nixon.
"The main thing to remember: We know who our friends are," said Mr Nixon.
North Vietnamese troops seized Saigon in 1975, after Mr Nixon had resigned in the Watergate scandal.
Mr Thieu in a bitter farewell address called the US an "inhumane ally," saying the Nixon team forced him to sign the Paris Peace Accords under false promises it would still defend South Vietnam.
Ken Hughes, a Nixon expert at the University of Virginia's Presidential Recordings Project, said the tapes showed that Mr Nixon was "very duplicitous" with the South Vietnamese.
Mr Nixon believed the communists would eventually triumph but could not end the war before his re-election and even afterward wanted the South to sign on to the Paris Peace Accords to provide political cover, said Mr Hughes.
"If Mr Nixon had cut off US aid to South Vietnam in 1973, the entire nation would have realised that after having added four years and 20,000 American casualties to the war, he had gotten nothing," remarked Mr Hughes.
"Mr Nixon wanted the settlement because it would put a year or two between his final withdrawal and the communists' final victory. That would make it look like South Vietnam's destruction was its own fault," he said.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Salty Mekong Delta thirsts for water
Salinity is killing the trees of this farmer in Go Dat District, Kien Giang Province. The Mekong Delta is seriously short of fresh water this dry season.Saturday, March 14, 2009
Thanh Nien News
The Mekong Delta is at risk of losing its eminence as Vietnam’s rice bowl as river levels drop from upstream irrigation and sea water encroaches farther inland.
Drying rivers and increasing encroachment of seawater are leaving farmers in the Mekong
Delta short of freshwater for their crops, yet no solution has been advanced for reversing the situation.
Last month the water was brackish up to 50 kilometers upstream in some of the delta’s many channels, the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research says in a recent report.
With two or three months left to go before the wet season arrives, the encroachment could extend up to 70 kilometers inland in places before the rain arrives.
While the salinity can be as low as one percent, it can be as high as 25 percent, the institute says.
Turning more land into paddy fields upstream of Vietnam and taking more water from the river to irrigate the extra crops has had a profound impact on the Mekong.
Since eight years ago, the highest level of the Tan Chau River in An Giang Province has dropped nearly 80 centimeters, a local newspaper reports.
In the past 30 years, the water flow where the Mekong crosses into Vietnam has declined by an estimated 36 percent.
In almost the same period, from 1979 to 2006, the water flow along the delta’s two main channels, the Tien and Hau rivers, declined from 2,500 cubic meters to 1,600 cubic meters per second, the paper says.
Duong Van Ni, director of Can Tho University’s Hoa An Biodiversity Application and Research Center, says the Mekong Delta has 60 percent less naturally wet or moist land outside of the wet season compared to 1968.
“It’s a crisis, this shortage of freshwater in the dry season and the seawater moving farther inland and worsening the salinity,” says Ky Quang Vinh, head of the Can Tho Center for Natural Resources and Environment Observation.
It only takes a saline level of four parts per thousand to kill many freshwater fish, rice and fruits, the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute says, adding that this year’s summer-autumn crop will begin in drought conditions.
Although the delta’s farmers can turn to hardier crops and livestock for their livelihood, says Ni, it doesn’t change the fact that there is not even enough water for daily household use by the region’s inhabitants.
Because the Hau River is so low in the dry season, like now, Can Tho City’s water treatment plants are getting their water from the river surface, which implies risks of salinity and pollution, according to Ni.
“The water plants do not have an alternative water source,” he says.
The water level has fallen so far that any oil spill or chemical overflow from the factories on the riverbanks will take a considerable time to clean up, he adds.
Groundwater too is at risk of drying up or at least becoming too saline to use because of overuse and misuse, and the experts have warned about this previously.
An international conference on groundwater held in Greece last year reported that groundwater levels had decreased by five to eight meters at some places in the Mekong Delta over the past 10 years.
Contamination of the region’s groundwater is a big problem.
For instance, the residents of Hau Giang Province’s Long My District have been ferrying and trucking in freshwater from elsewhere since their wells turned brackish a little while back.
In Ca Mau, Soc Trang and Bac Lieu provinces, the groundwater is diminishing and what can be retrieved is increasingly saline, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment reports.
Worse still, traces of arsenic have been detected in the wells in Dong Thap and Long An provinces.
In excess of one billion liters of groundwater is taken each day from the hundreds of thousands of wells in the region, the ministry says.
Duong Van Ni suggests that, in the absence of proper solutions, the dozen provinces that make up the Mekong Delta build large freshwater reservoirs, while agricultural officials urge farmers to conserve water as much as possible.
Drying rivers and increasing encroachment of seawater are leaving farmers in the Mekong
Delta short of freshwater for their crops, yet no solution has been advanced for reversing the situation.
Last month the water was brackish up to 50 kilometers upstream in some of the delta’s many channels, the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research says in a recent report.
With two or three months left to go before the wet season arrives, the encroachment could extend up to 70 kilometers inland in places before the rain arrives.
While the salinity can be as low as one percent, it can be as high as 25 percent, the institute says.
Turning more land into paddy fields upstream of Vietnam and taking more water from the river to irrigate the extra crops has had a profound impact on the Mekong.
Since eight years ago, the highest level of the Tan Chau River in An Giang Province has dropped nearly 80 centimeters, a local newspaper reports.
In the past 30 years, the water flow where the Mekong crosses into Vietnam has declined by an estimated 36 percent.
In almost the same period, from 1979 to 2006, the water flow along the delta’s two main channels, the Tien and Hau rivers, declined from 2,500 cubic meters to 1,600 cubic meters per second, the paper says.
Duong Van Ni, director of Can Tho University’s Hoa An Biodiversity Application and Research Center, says the Mekong Delta has 60 percent less naturally wet or moist land outside of the wet season compared to 1968.
“It’s a crisis, this shortage of freshwater in the dry season and the seawater moving farther inland and worsening the salinity,” says Ky Quang Vinh, head of the Can Tho Center for Natural Resources and Environment Observation.
It only takes a saline level of four parts per thousand to kill many freshwater fish, rice and fruits, the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute says, adding that this year’s summer-autumn crop will begin in drought conditions.
Although the delta’s farmers can turn to hardier crops and livestock for their livelihood, says Ni, it doesn’t change the fact that there is not even enough water for daily household use by the region’s inhabitants.
Because the Hau River is so low in the dry season, like now, Can Tho City’s water treatment plants are getting their water from the river surface, which implies risks of salinity and pollution, according to Ni.
“The water plants do not have an alternative water source,” he says.
The water level has fallen so far that any oil spill or chemical overflow from the factories on the riverbanks will take a considerable time to clean up, he adds.
Groundwater too is at risk of drying up or at least becoming too saline to use because of overuse and misuse, and the experts have warned about this previously.
An international conference on groundwater held in Greece last year reported that groundwater levels had decreased by five to eight meters at some places in the Mekong Delta over the past 10 years.
Contamination of the region’s groundwater is a big problem.
For instance, the residents of Hau Giang Province’s Long My District have been ferrying and trucking in freshwater from elsewhere since their wells turned brackish a little while back.
In Ca Mau, Soc Trang and Bac Lieu provinces, the groundwater is diminishing and what can be retrieved is increasingly saline, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment reports.
Worse still, traces of arsenic have been detected in the wells in Dong Thap and Long An provinces.
In excess of one billion liters of groundwater is taken each day from the hundreds of thousands of wells in the region, the ministry says.
Duong Van Ni suggests that, in the absence of proper solutions, the dozen provinces that make up the Mekong Delta build large freshwater reservoirs, while agricultural officials urge farmers to conserve water as much as possible.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Hun Sen cancelled trip to Kampot out of concern over storm Noul hitting South Vietnam [-Hok Lundy's accident taught Hun Sen the lesson?]
Storm churns towards Vietnam
Monday, November 17, 2008
By Ho Binh Minh
Reuters
Monday, November 17, 2008
By Ho Binh Minh
Reuters
A strong tropical storm churned towards southern Vietnam on Monday, threatening a direct hit on the densely populated Mekong Delta and substantial damage to the country's coffee production.
State-run forecasters said Tropical Storm Noul, with winds of 88 kph (55 mph), would reach landfall around the tourist spots of Nha Trang and Mui Ne late on Monday and cross the coffee-growing province of Lam Dong.
Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer and the third-largest producer of crude oil in Southeast Asia.
Noul's arrival coincides with the peak of the coffee harvest in the Central Highlands. Torrential rains could halt the harvest and prevent farmers from drying beans outdoors, causing delays and lowering quality.
The storm could also wreak havoc in the delta, which normally avoids the worst of the storms that roll in from the South China Sea, making people who live there relatively unprepared for disaster.
"It could cause huge damage to lives and property," Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung said in an urgent telegraph to provincial authorities and state oil and gas group Petrovietnam.
All offshore oil production remained operational, an official from Petrovietnam said, although state television said Vietsovpetro, a Russian joint venture, would temporarily shut operation on four oil rigs and evacuate workers.
It did not say how much production would be affected.
In his telegraph, Hung ordered the immediate recall of all fishing boats in the area and said children should not go to school as preparations were made for mass evacuations across a 400 km (250 mile) swathe of coastline.
More than 74,000 people needed evacuation while more than 133,000 fishermen had been warned to take shelter as the storm moved to within 100 kms (65 miles) of the coast, the government said.
In neighbouring Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen cancelled a scheduled trip on Tuesday to the coastal province of Kampot, abutting Vietnam, because of the storm.
Vietnamese government reports said more than 17,000 fishing boats were operating near the Spratlys in the path of the storm.
The Mekong Delta, where the latest rice crop has been harvested, is rarely hit by storms. Typhoon Linda caught the region unawares in November 1997, killing at least 464 people. The government never revised an initial tally that listed more than 3,200 people as missing.
(Additional reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam and Ek Madra in Phnom Penh; Editing by Ed Cropley and David Fox)
State-run forecasters said Tropical Storm Noul, with winds of 88 kph (55 mph), would reach landfall around the tourist spots of Nha Trang and Mui Ne late on Monday and cross the coffee-growing province of Lam Dong.
Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer and the third-largest producer of crude oil in Southeast Asia.
Noul's arrival coincides with the peak of the coffee harvest in the Central Highlands. Torrential rains could halt the harvest and prevent farmers from drying beans outdoors, causing delays and lowering quality.
The storm could also wreak havoc in the delta, which normally avoids the worst of the storms that roll in from the South China Sea, making people who live there relatively unprepared for disaster.
"It could cause huge damage to lives and property," Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung said in an urgent telegraph to provincial authorities and state oil and gas group Petrovietnam.
All offshore oil production remained operational, an official from Petrovietnam said, although state television said Vietsovpetro, a Russian joint venture, would temporarily shut operation on four oil rigs and evacuate workers.
It did not say how much production would be affected.
In his telegraph, Hung ordered the immediate recall of all fishing boats in the area and said children should not go to school as preparations were made for mass evacuations across a 400 km (250 mile) swathe of coastline.
More than 74,000 people needed evacuation while more than 133,000 fishermen had been warned to take shelter as the storm moved to within 100 kms (65 miles) of the coast, the government said.
In neighbouring Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen cancelled a scheduled trip on Tuesday to the coastal province of Kampot, abutting Vietnam, because of the storm.
Vietnamese government reports said more than 17,000 fishing boats were operating near the Spratlys in the path of the storm.
The Mekong Delta, where the latest rice crop has been harvested, is rarely hit by storms. Typhoon Linda caught the region unawares in November 1997, killing at least 464 people. The government never revised an initial tally that listed more than 3,200 people as missing.
(Additional reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam and Ek Madra in Phnom Penh; Editing by Ed Cropley and David Fox)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Khmers Krom in Moat Chrouk Province Protested About Lands
27th March 2008
By Sok Serey
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Khmerization
On the web at http://khmerization.blogspot.com
By Sok Serey
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Khmerization
On the web at http://khmerization.blogspot.com
About 100 Khmers Krom from Svay Tong district, An Giang, or as Khmers called it Moat Chrouk, Province have on Thursday peacefully protested on their lands to request the Vietnamese authority to return their lands back to them.
In the mean time, there are about 500 other Khmers Krom protesting for the same reason in front of the city hall of Chau Laing commune, Svay Tong district of An Giang province of Vietnam for the return of 4,000 hectares of their farmlands which belonged to 500 families.
Mr. Chau Hen, a Khmer Krom living in Chau Laing commune of Svay Tong district, An Giang province told Radio Free Asia by telephone from the protest site on Thursday that: “We have come down to our ancestral lands to request for their returns. The Vietnamese government didn’t want to return these lands to us. They have promised to resolve this issue by harvest season (November) but they just lied to us in order to exploit us, but they did not resolve anything for us.”
A woman, whose name is Neang Hean, who is also protesting, has described about the reason for the protest like this: “We have come to protest about our lands. Everyday, I don’t have any lands to farm so I have to work for other people. They didn’t resolve the issue for us.”
According to the sources, those more than 500 Khmer Krom families have lost approximately 4,000 hectares of their lands since 1975 when they escaped to Cambodia due to fighting between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces. In 1980 and 1981 they returned to their ancestral lands but their lands were confiscated. Their fights for the returns of their lands have begun since 2001 but there was no resolution.
Mr Trinh Ba Cam, spokesman for the Vietnamese Embassy in Cambodia, said: “The problems of land disputes happened everywhere due to developments, but they are not due to the confiscations of lands or other issues.”
In relation to the above Khmer Krom protests, Mr. Thach Setha, chairman of the Khmer Krom Association in Cambodia said: “The claims that there are no confiscations of lands from the (Khmer Krom) people are incorrect because these actions have been carried out since 1976, 1977, 1978. Especially in 1978.”
According to the sources, these peaceful protests by the Khmer Krom to request for the returns of their lands on the morning of Thursday went on for about 5 hours and the protests were called off when the local Vietnamese authorities in Chau Laing commune did not show up to resolve the issues or receive their complaints. And there were about 10 Vietnamese government secret agents who were sent to take photographs of the protesters, but there were no violence or crackdown.
In the mean time, there are about 500 other Khmers Krom protesting for the same reason in front of the city hall of Chau Laing commune, Svay Tong district of An Giang province of Vietnam for the return of 4,000 hectares of their farmlands which belonged to 500 families.
Mr. Chau Hen, a Khmer Krom living in Chau Laing commune of Svay Tong district, An Giang province told Radio Free Asia by telephone from the protest site on Thursday that: “We have come down to our ancestral lands to request for their returns. The Vietnamese government didn’t want to return these lands to us. They have promised to resolve this issue by harvest season (November) but they just lied to us in order to exploit us, but they did not resolve anything for us.”
A woman, whose name is Neang Hean, who is also protesting, has described about the reason for the protest like this: “We have come to protest about our lands. Everyday, I don’t have any lands to farm so I have to work for other people. They didn’t resolve the issue for us.”
According to the sources, those more than 500 Khmer Krom families have lost approximately 4,000 hectares of their lands since 1975 when they escaped to Cambodia due to fighting between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces. In 1980 and 1981 they returned to their ancestral lands but their lands were confiscated. Their fights for the returns of their lands have begun since 2001 but there was no resolution.
Mr Trinh Ba Cam, spokesman for the Vietnamese Embassy in Cambodia, said: “The problems of land disputes happened everywhere due to developments, but they are not due to the confiscations of lands or other issues.”
In relation to the above Khmer Krom protests, Mr. Thach Setha, chairman of the Khmer Krom Association in Cambodia said: “The claims that there are no confiscations of lands from the (Khmer Krom) people are incorrect because these actions have been carried out since 1976, 1977, 1978. Especially in 1978.”
According to the sources, these peaceful protests by the Khmer Krom to request for the returns of their lands on the morning of Thursday went on for about 5 hours and the protests were called off when the local Vietnamese authorities in Chau Laing commune did not show up to resolve the issues or receive their complaints. And there were about 10 Vietnamese government secret agents who were sent to take photographs of the protesters, but there were no violence or crackdown.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Khmer Krom in Vietnam plans to demonstrate to demand their lands back
05 Dec 2007By Kim Pov Sottan
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy
A source from the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF) indicated that Khmer Krom people living in Motr Chourk (An Giang in Vietnamese) and Khleang (Soc Trang in Vietnamese) provinces, Kampuchea Krom (South Vietnam) will hold their demonstration in Hanoi within 10 days to demand back their lands, if the Vietnamese authority does not provide a resolution to their land problems.
The demonstration plan was decided when about 100 (Khmer Krom) people from Motr Chrouk province protested about land problems in An Cu commune, Tinh Bien distritct, and about 30 other (Khmer Krom) people demonstrated about land problems also at the Native people committee located in Prek Russei city on Tuesday.
Neang Yer, the 50-year-old Khmer Krom woman who led the protest in Motr Chourk province, indicated that the Vietnamese provincial authority promised to resolve all these issues within 60 days, but that it has been almost two months already, and there is still no resolution yet.
Neang Yer said: “I promised them that if in 10 days, there is still no resolution (on the land disputes) for us to see, we will go to the central (communist) party, we will go to Prey Nokor (Ho Chi Minh City), and we will wait there to see what answer they will give us. If they don’t provide a decent answer (in Prey Nokor), my group will travel to Hanoi next.”
The same situation is also occurring in Khleang province, Vinh Ba, a Khmer Krom representative of the Khleang province protesters, said that the (authority) asked the people to remain calm a few months back, but it does not want to resolve this issue, that is why, the people came to protest one more time.
Vinh Ba said: “The delegate of prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung came here 2-3 times already, but there is no resolution whatsoever. My group from Khleang village asks for a resolution. It is very difficult for us, the situation occurs long ago, 17-year already and there is no resolution at all. And for me, I don’t ask for anything else other than my lands, they (VN authorities) took them and they did not compensate me, how can I not ask for my lands back? I must ask for them back.”
Land protests by Khmer Krom people are happening almost monthly. Villagers who lost their lands claimed that the Vietnamese authority confiscated several hectares of their ancestral lands to share among themselves (VN officials). Some saw their lands confiscated for more than 10 years already, while others have just seen their lands confiscated recently only.
RFA could not reach the Vietnamese authority on this issue.
Trinh Ba Cam, Hanoi’s mouthpiece in Cambodia, indicated that the confiscation of lands occurs in every country: “Land disputes are occurring in every country, however, their resolutions depend on the authority. The authority will provide a decent resolution according to the government’s determination.”
Recently, a Cambodian parliamentary delegation led by SRP MP Son Chhay visited South Vietnam, in particular in Kampuchea Krom. During the visit, Son Chhay discussed with his Vietnamese counterparts about cooperation (between the two countries) and he also asked Hanoi to resolve the land dispute issues suffered by Khmer Krom people.
The demonstration plan was decided when about 100 (Khmer Krom) people from Motr Chrouk province protested about land problems in An Cu commune, Tinh Bien distritct, and about 30 other (Khmer Krom) people demonstrated about land problems also at the Native people committee located in Prek Russei city on Tuesday.
Neang Yer, the 50-year-old Khmer Krom woman who led the protest in Motr Chourk province, indicated that the Vietnamese provincial authority promised to resolve all these issues within 60 days, but that it has been almost two months already, and there is still no resolution yet.
Neang Yer said: “I promised them that if in 10 days, there is still no resolution (on the land disputes) for us to see, we will go to the central (communist) party, we will go to Prey Nokor (Ho Chi Minh City), and we will wait there to see what answer they will give us. If they don’t provide a decent answer (in Prey Nokor), my group will travel to Hanoi next.”
The same situation is also occurring in Khleang province, Vinh Ba, a Khmer Krom representative of the Khleang province protesters, said that the (authority) asked the people to remain calm a few months back, but it does not want to resolve this issue, that is why, the people came to protest one more time.
Vinh Ba said: “The delegate of prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung came here 2-3 times already, but there is no resolution whatsoever. My group from Khleang village asks for a resolution. It is very difficult for us, the situation occurs long ago, 17-year already and there is no resolution at all. And for me, I don’t ask for anything else other than my lands, they (VN authorities) took them and they did not compensate me, how can I not ask for my lands back? I must ask for them back.”
Land protests by Khmer Krom people are happening almost monthly. Villagers who lost their lands claimed that the Vietnamese authority confiscated several hectares of their ancestral lands to share among themselves (VN officials). Some saw their lands confiscated for more than 10 years already, while others have just seen their lands confiscated recently only.
RFA could not reach the Vietnamese authority on this issue.
Trinh Ba Cam, Hanoi’s mouthpiece in Cambodia, indicated that the confiscation of lands occurs in every country: “Land disputes are occurring in every country, however, their resolutions depend on the authority. The authority will provide a decent resolution according to the government’s determination.”
Recently, a Cambodian parliamentary delegation led by SRP MP Son Chhay visited South Vietnam, in particular in Kampuchea Krom. During the visit, Son Chhay discussed with his Vietnamese counterparts about cooperation (between the two countries) and he also asked Hanoi to resolve the land dispute issues suffered by Khmer Krom people.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Bridge collapses in Vietnam, at least 60 dead
A general view of the collapse of the Can Tho bridge under construction in Vietnam's southern province of Vinh Long, on 26 September. At least 14 people died Wednesday morning following the collapse of the bridge. (AFP) HANOI (Reuters) - A bridge under construction collapsed in southern Vietnam on Wednesday, killing at least 60 workers, and 100 others were missing, a contractor and police said.
State-run Vietnam TV showed footage of the damage to the collapsed concrete and steel structure in Can Tho City and reported that people were still trapped in the rubble.
A contractor with China State Construction Engineering Corp, one of the firms involved in the construction of the bridge, said by telephone that 60 people were dead.
"They are still pulling out bodies from the rubble, I could hear the screams," the contractor said from Can Tho, which is 170 km (105 miles) south of the commercial centre of Ho Chi Minh City.
Police said there were about 100 workers directly under the section of the bridge over the Hau river where the scaffolding collapsed at about 08:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) at the start of a shift. About 150 workers were on the bridge surface, a Can Tho police officer said.
"The figures of victims are still being updated but as many as 100 could be dead or missing for now," the officer said by telephone.
The cause of the collapse on a section of the 2.75 km (1.7 miles) long bridge was not immediately known, but Vietnam TV reported that rains may have softened the foundation.
The bridge was being built at a cost of $300 million to be finished next year.
Most of the workers were Vietnamese but the contractor said that less than 10 Filipinos and Japanese workers were unaccounted for.
Officials in Can Tho said about 250 engineers and workers from three Japanese contractors -- Taisei Corp, Kazima and Nippon Steel Corp -- were on the construction site at the time of the accident.
Hau river is one of the nine tributaries of the Mekong river when it enters southern Vietnam from Cambodia. Rice traders said barge traffic would not be affected by the accident.
The online VnExpress (www.vnexpress.net) newspaper quoted officials in Can Tho as saying the scaffolding collapsed.
"We heard a loud explosion and then a big cloud of dust and screams from workers stuck in the rubble," the state-run newspaper quoted a bridge engineer at the site as saying.
State-run Vietnam TV showed footage of the damage to the collapsed concrete and steel structure in Can Tho City and reported that people were still trapped in the rubble.
A contractor with China State Construction Engineering Corp, one of the firms involved in the construction of the bridge, said by telephone that 60 people were dead.
"They are still pulling out bodies from the rubble, I could hear the screams," the contractor said from Can Tho, which is 170 km (105 miles) south of the commercial centre of Ho Chi Minh City.
Police said there were about 100 workers directly under the section of the bridge over the Hau river where the scaffolding collapsed at about 08:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) at the start of a shift. About 150 workers were on the bridge surface, a Can Tho police officer said.
"The figures of victims are still being updated but as many as 100 could be dead or missing for now," the officer said by telephone.
The cause of the collapse on a section of the 2.75 km (1.7 miles) long bridge was not immediately known, but Vietnam TV reported that rains may have softened the foundation.
The bridge was being built at a cost of $300 million to be finished next year.
Most of the workers were Vietnamese but the contractor said that less than 10 Filipinos and Japanese workers were unaccounted for.
Officials in Can Tho said about 250 engineers and workers from three Japanese contractors -- Taisei Corp, Kazima and Nippon Steel Corp -- were on the construction site at the time of the accident.
Hau river is one of the nine tributaries of the Mekong river when it enters southern Vietnam from Cambodia. Rice traders said barge traffic would not be affected by the accident.
The online VnExpress (www.vnexpress.net) newspaper quoted officials in Can Tho as saying the scaffolding collapsed.
"We heard a loud explosion and then a big cloud of dust and screams from workers stuck in the rubble," the state-run newspaper quoted a bridge engineer at the site as saying.
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