Obama’s Visit to Vietnam Comes as Mass Demonstrations Protest Pollution and Massive Fish Kills

[Geee]

American Thinker:

On May 1, after marking the 41st anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam, residents in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) and major port cities in other parts of the country woke up to find thousands of energized young people taking to the streets in protest of a massive fish kill. They carried banners such as “Fish need clean water, people need the truth” and “Stop poisoning fish our food source.”

 

Hundreds of tons of fish have been washing up on and blanketing the central coastline and beaches of at least four provinces in Vietnam including Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue. This massive kill affected farm-raised, rare, and wild ocean fish, as well as crabs, shrimp and other aquatic life on which tens of thousands of people depend on for their livelihoods. These poisoned fish were being sold in local markets.

 

Some are blaming this environmental disaster on toxic wastes piped into the South China Sea from Chinese-owned plastic and steel plants in Vietnam. However, communist officials claimed that there is no proof these plants are linked to the fish deaths; instead, the fish could have been killed by toxic discharges produced by humans (sewage). Since officials had advanced warning of the pending disaster and what its ecological consequences would be, the real blame lies with the communist regime’s corrupt and incompetent officials who are responsible for enforcing the nation’s environmental laws. This isn’t an isolated case, for these same officials enable huge amounts of toxic environmental pollution throughout Vietnam.

 

However, what started out as peaceful protests soon turned violent when plainclothes police leading thugs from the state-funded Vietnamese Fatherland Front (VFF: Mặt Trận Tổ Quốc Việt Nam) infiltrated the crowds and created incidents to give uniformed police cause to react with violence, beating and arresting the protesters. When friends and family members of those arrested went to the police stations to post bail, they were also beaten. The detainments came the day before Tom Malinowski, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, arrived in Vietnam to scope out the situation in preparation for President Obama’s visit on Monday. While there, Obama will be promoting the stalled lop-sided Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is advantageous to Vietnam, and the lifting restrictions on arms sales to Hanoi as part of his pivot to Vietnam. Many believe that he will circumvent issues of gross human rights abuses and political prisoners, and blame the fish kill on global warming.