Vietnam to allow dual nationality

A communist poster in Hanoi

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has amended its nationality law to legalise dual citizenship, a change that could affect many in the Vietnamese diaspora of more than three million people, officials said Friday.

The legislature of the communist country on Thursday passed a revised law that maintains Vietnam’s long standing single-nationality principle but, for the first time, allows for a number of exceptions.

The change means that many post-war refugees and other overseas Vietnamese who have become citizens of second countries can officially reclaim their lapsed Vietnamese nationality without losing their new citizenship.

“Those who apply to regain Vietnamese nationality can retain their foreign citizenship if they have justified cause and with permission from the state president,” reported the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA).

The law also says that children born overseas to at least one Vietnamese parent will be able to claim citizenship of the Southeast Asian country.

The amendment brings the decade-old law in line with what has long been common practice, as many Vietnamese immigrants in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere hold two or more passports.

Vietnam has in recent years stepped up efforts to lure back overseas Vietnamese or ‘Viet Kieu’ — many of whom still harbour a deep distrust of the state they once fled — along with their capital and expertise.

Many of them fled their homeland during and after the Vietnam war, which ended in 1975, often surviving harrowing journeys as boat people followed by years in crowded refugee camps to start new lives in about 100 countries.

The VNA report said a strict single-nationality rule “no longer conforms to real-life, practical situations” and had led to many violations.

The text of the amended law said that those who regain their Vietnamese nationality are “assured… all rights of citizenship and must obey all citizens’ duties towards the state and society according to its laws.”

This would suggest that those who regain their Vietnamese nationality will enjoy full rights, such as being able to buy property, but may also be subject to obligations such as military service for males.

However, the law also states that further government decrees will be issued to clarify some of the finer points of the amended law.

National Assembly deputy and Vietnamese historian Duong Trung Quoc told AFP legislators had debated whether those who regain citizenship could buy property, vote in elections and would have to do military service.

“These are not simple issues and deputies only dealt with them in principle,” he said. “Ensuring their full rights to citizenship is a huge task.

“Legal conflicts will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and in concrete circumstances, depending on Vietnamese laws and international conventions signed by Vietnam.”

AFP: Vietnam to allow dual nationality

Vietnam allows some sex-change surgeries

Surgeons operate at Yanhee General Hospital, famous for sex change operations, in Bangkok

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has legalised some types of sex change surgery but will let government physicians have the final say on what gender a patient is, a health official in the communist country said Thursday.

The decree published this week allows corrective surgery for hermaphrodites and people born with certain genital deformities, but not for people who are physically of one sex and request gender reassignment surgery.

“The reassignment of gender for those who are complete in terms of gender” is forbidden, says the text of the decree, which adds that the new measure aims to “ensure that everyone can live in his/her correct gender.”

Nguyen Huy Quang, deputy head of the health ministry’s legal department, said the decree “still prohibits sex change for those who are already in their original gender,” as determined by medical and genetic testing.

The decree would ensure the privacy of, and prohibit discrimination against, people who have undergone gender reassignment surgery, and also require medical proof when they register with authorities under their new gender.

Statistics on people seeking gender reassignment surgery are not available in Vietnam, but several transsexuals are known to have travelled to Thailand to undergo sex-change surgery.

AFP: Vietnam allows some sex-change surgeries

Vietnam to permit (some) foreigners to own property

25 May 2008

Martha Ann Overland writes from Hanoi:

Vietnam’s National Assembly has voted to allow foreigners to buy property but when it goes into effect next year there will be limits on who is affected and what they can buy.

The resolution passed May 22 limits ownership to foreigners who meet specific residence and professional criteria, according to the official Vietnam News Agency. And eligible buyers will be allowed to purchase only apartments, not houses or land.

Under the new rules, individuals who qualify include expatriates investing in the country, foreigners married to Vietnamese and those with university degrees working in specialized fields. A category was created for those who have been decorated by the president of Vietnam and named an honorary citizen.

When the law goes into effect, foreigners will be restricted to apartments in approved housing developments and after 50 years, apartments must be sold or given away. The properties must be occupied by the owners and cannot be used as investments.

While foreigners might find the restrictions less than attractive, the government hopes that it will signal that Vietnam is open for business. “This law, once it takes effect on Jan. 1, 2009, will further promote the development of the real estate market for foreigners in Vietnam,” said Ngo Duc Manh, vice chairman of the National Assembly’s External Committee. “It is a positive signal for foreigners working and living in Vietnam.”

According to the Ministry of Construction, 80,000 foreigners now live and work in Vietnam; about 20,000 of them would be eligible to buy under the new rules. Currently most expatriates prefer to live in villas and detached houses.

Despite the limitations, the change was welcomed by real estate developers who hope additional buyers will help buoy sales. Although apartment prices in urban areas had been rising, the market has softened in the past few months, with prices dropping 20 to 40 percent from their all-time highs.

International Herald Tribune – Vietnam to permit some foreigners to own property

Vietnam drugs haul largest ever | BBC NEWS

Police in Vietnam say they have found nearly nine tons of cannabis in a shipment of blue jeans from Pakistan.

The authorities say it is their largest ever drugs seizure – at a value of $90m (£45m).

The drugs, shipped through the port of Hai Phong, were found near the border with China, and are are believed to have been ultimately bound for Canada.

The drugs were in cartons
under piles of jeans

Four Chinese citizens and one Indonesian have been arrested in connection with the find.

Tough laws

Anti-drugs police said that the cannabis resin was siezed earlier this week on two trucks heading for the Chinese border. It had arrived in April on a ship from Pakistan.

Vietnam has introduced some of the world’s toughest drugs laws, and the possession or trafficking of heroin or opium is punishable by death or life imprisonment.

In February a government review of drug-related crimes and trafficking said border provinces had strengthened ties with neighbour countries to fight the transport of drugs.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Vietnam drugs haul largest ever

US, Vietnam sign deal to repatriate illegal immigrants

 http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4gNIO7y7PZs0QMkw7hJUtfHvTog

HANOI (AFP) — The United States and Vietnam have signed a memorandum of understanding on the repatriation of Vietnamese illegal immigrants from the United States, the US embassy said Tuesday.

Under the agreement signed in Hanoi, “Vietnamese nationals who arrived in the United States illegally on or after July 12, 1995 are subject to return” to the communist Southeast Asian country, the embassy said in a statement.

US Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Julie Myers and Vietnam’s Deputy Foreign Minister Dao Viet Trung signed the MOU in Hanoi, the statement said.

“Agreements such as this are the building blocks of diplomacy,” said Myers. “This agreement allows us to carry out a judge’s order to remove individuals from our country in a safe and humane manner.”

The statement said the United States would “manage the repatriation of Vietnamese nationals in an orderly and safe way, and with respect for the individual human dignity of the person being repatriated.”

Vietnam must regulate blogs, say officials

http://news.smh.com.au/vietnam-must-regulate-blogs-say-officials/20071226-1j0y.html 

Vietnam needs to control blogs to prevent the spread of subversive and sexually explicit content, communist government officials said according to a state media report Wednesday.

Weblogs have exploded in Vietnam in recent years, especially among youths, providing a forum for chatting about mostly societal and lifestyle issues and providing an alternative to the state-controlled media.

Recent anti-Chinese protests over the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands, which were halted following rebukes from Beijing, were organised and debated on the Internet but almost completely ignored by the official press.

The ministry responsible for culture and information, which controls traditional media, in July said it was drafting regulations that would fine bloggers who post subversive and sexually explicit content online.

Deputy Information and Communications Minister Do Quy Doan this week told a conference on Vietnam’s press law that “controlling weblogs is about developing them in accordance with the law, not forbidding them.

“We should provide guidelines that help people know what type of information they can upload online,” Doan said according to a report in the English-language Than Nien (Youth Daily) newspaper.

Bloggers would also be held responsible for information they access, he reportedly said, adding: “Once we have obvious regulations, I think no one will be able to supervise weblogs better than the bloggers themselves.”

Nguyen The Ky, head of the press management and publishing bureau, said: “It’s alright some bloggers have recently showed their patriotism, posting opinions about the Paracels-Spratly archipelagos on their weblogs.”

“But some have sparked protest, causing public disorder and affecting the country’s foreign affairs.

“It’s impossible to control the Internet, so I think we should bolster technical security measures in addition to creating regulations.”

Vietnam Helmet Law Changes Culture Overnight

http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-12-17-voa13.cfm

A new law has taken effect in Vietnam requiring all motorbike riders to wear helmets. Motorbikes are the most common form of transportation in Vietnam, but drivers long refused to wear helmets, leading to huge numbers of traffic fatalities. In Hanoi, Matt Steinglass has more.

People ride motor bikes without helmet during rush hour in Hanoi, Vietnam (File Photo)

The sound of a Vietnamese city is the sound of motorbikes. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, motorbikes account for more than 90 percent of all the vehicles on the road.

But for decades, most Vietnamese riders refused to wear helmets, which they derisively call “rice cookers”. Traffic safety advocates wondered what it would to change people’s behavior.

On Saturday, they got their answer.

Traffic police officer Nguyen Ngoc Hieu says according to Government Decree Number 32, from December 15, everyone riding a motorbike anywhere in Vietnam, including passengers and children, must wear a helmet. He says the government is doubling the traffic police force to more than 1,000 officers to enforce the new law.

Hieu spoke Friday at the entrance to Hanoi’s Long Bien bridge, one of the busiest intersections in the city. It was the day before the new law took effect, but at most, only a quarter of the riders were wearing helmets.

Nguyen Van Hoa, a public security official at the People’s Committee in the Hanoi neighborhood of Ba Dinh, says the helmet campaign is going slowly. Hoa says at one local primary school, many parents hadn’t bought helmets for their children. He says this had made officials angry.

Meanwhile, the sidewalks of Hanoi are crowded with helmet vendors doing a brisk trade as people try to comply with the new law.

Longtime helmet shop owner Nguyen Nga Thao says her sales are up more than 10 times, to about 2,000 helmets a day.

Thao says helmets have become much more fashionable since September, when the new law was announced. The new ones are lighter, with designs such as hibiscus flowers and panda faces, for female riders who would not have bought a helmet before.

Nguyen Thi Bao owns Ba Café, a fashionable coffee shop. She says she just bought her first helmet, a green Piaggio model, to match her green Piaggio motorbike.

Bao says she would still prefer not to wear one. With such beautiful hair, she says, how can I wear a helmet when I go out at night?

Government Decree Number 32 took effect at six o’clock Saturday morning. By noon, it was clear that compliance rates were more than 99 percent. In one night, Hanoi’s streets had become a sea of brightly decorated motorbike helmets.

Dang Van Binh, 52, has driven a “xe om”, or motorbike taxi, for 13 years.

Binh says in the entire morning, he had seen only a few drivers without helmets. He says several were stopped by police and fined – 150,000 dong, or about $9, more than the price of a cheap helmet.

Le Huong, 25, was wearing a helmet for the first time.

Huong said she still thought helmets were ugly, and was only wearing them because of the law.

Then Huong’s friend Hong, who was driving the motorbike, explained in English.

“The government, they approved for all the people to follow, and we are Vietnamese and we are the good ones, so we follow,” said Hong. “We are Vietnamese, and we love our country. So we follow our government.”

Helmets now mandatory in motorbike-crazy Vietnam

 http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSP34262

HANOI, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Vietnamese motorcyclists appear to be complying with a new rule that gives them no choice but to wear a crash helmet, the latest drive to reduce the unacceptably high road traffic toll.

The millions of small, noisy motorbikes vrooming around city streets, often defying traffic laws, are symbols of the energy in the fast-emerging Southeast Asian market economy, but with severe costs in lives.

According to government estimates, up to 13,000 people are killed and more than 11,000 injured in traffic accidents every year. Half of all casualties are brain injuries.

“When suffering from cranial trauma, if not dead, most of them can no longer work,” said Dr Cao Doc Lap as he stood among beds of seriously injured patients at Hanoi’s Viet Duc hospital, where he is in charge of emergency care. “If the situation continues, then it will seriously affect our society.”

The sickening toll on the young labour force year after year seems finally to have spurred the communist government and the general public into action.

Helmets became mandatory on December 15.

And while citizens had largely ignored previous decrees and campaigns, this time there were visible signs in the teeming city streets that more Vietnamese were willing to don protective headgear they have often derided as “rice cookers”.

The central government’s Resolution 32 requires all motorbike riders and passengers to wear helmets on all roads across the nation of 85 million.

On Saturday, compliance was high in the capital, Hanoi, and in the commercial centre of Ho Chi Minh City. The few who were not wearing helmets were stopped and fined by police officers stationed at many intersections.

RICE-COOKERS

“We look kind of funny and silly with these rice cookers on our heads, but we can live with it. Everyone else is wearing a cooker too so no one can laugh at us,” Do Thu Thuy, a 25-year-old marketing executive told Reuters from the back seat of her boyfriend’s $5,000 Piaggio scooter in Hanoi.

“One good thing is that we do feel safer.”

Police may impose instant fines of 100,000 -200,000 dong ($6-$12)). In a country where corruption is rife and people often pay cash to police for traffic violations, officers must write tickets so the fines could be paid at a state treasury office.

Speaking days before the rule came into force, Lap said his hospital treated 50-70 traffic accident patients a day, most of working age and 30 percent aged between 18 and 25.

The hospital courtyard and corridors were packed with mostly poor people, some crying in grief.

“He was not wearing a helmet,” Hoang Thi Kim Chi, 23, said of her 17-year-old brother, unconscious for the past two weeks after crashing and cracking his skull. “He can’t open his eyes or recognise family members.”

Taking risks with road safety is a poverty trap in a country where the annual per capita income is still only about $835.

An accident that kills or seriously injures a breadwinner can send a family sliding back into destitution.

Vietnam, an overwhelmingly bicycle-pedalling society just 15 years ago, has motorised faster than many countries. There were fewer than 500,000 motorbikes in 1990 but now there are more than 22 million, increasing at 20 percent a year.

DARK SIDE?

“Maybe it’s the dark side of globalisation,” said American Greig Craft, founder of the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation.

“Investment is coming into these poor countries, which is a good thing but it’s leading to certain social things that people aren’t prepared for.”

Craft has promoted helmet safety campaigns in Vietnam for nearly 10 years. He also has a factory near Hanoi that manufactures lightweight helmets suited for the tropical climate.

Though many Vietnamese can afford cars these days, small motorbikes are the cheaper, preferred mode of transportation.

The streets and roads of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are choking on the success of an economy growing at more than 8 percent a year while infrastructure lags far behind.

Motorbikes, often seen carrying entire families of four or overloaded with produce and poultry, have also come to symbolise individual independence in an authoritarian state.

Helmets are generally considered unfashionable and inconvenient in a hot climate.

In one helmet shop last week, young men and women were trying on brightly coloured red, green, blue and pink helmets to find the best one to wear on Saturday.

The women gazed in the mirror, adjusted the helmets and fussed with their long, silky black hair.

“I don’t think a helmet affects my appearance,” said one smiling customer, Vu Thi Cham. “I am wearing a helmet but my hair is still beautiful.”

Helmets that have been tested for safety sell for between 149,000 and 215,000 dong ($9-$13) but some cheaper, poor-quality helmets made in neighbouring countries are also on sale. (Additional reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam and Nguyen Van Vinh)

Vietnamese motorcyclists learn to love the ‘rice cooker’

Battling an alarming road toll, Vietnam is launching a new push to make motorcycle riders wear crash helmets and change attitudes about the device widely derided here as the “rice cooker.”

From Saturday, thousands of additional police will swarm out nationwide and impose stiff fines to enforce the new law on communist Vietnam’s surprisingly anarchic roads which are choked with 22 million motorbikes.

A similar road safety drive buckled under public pressure five years ago — but this time the government has made clear it’s serious, spreading the word on propaganda banners, state television and over neighbourhood loudspeakers.

Many Vietnamese, sensing the change is for real, have rushed to new shops that have cropped up across the country and are stocked with millions of shiny new helmets, many from China.

“The people are finally ready to accept it,” said Greig Craft, whose non-profit Asia Injury Prevention Foundation has campaigned for nine years to get Vietnamese motorcycle drivers to protect their heads.

“They’re not happy to do it, but they’re ready to face the facts.”

Vietnamese traffic is a sight to behold — motorcycles carrying entire families, bicycles, cyclos, cars and smoke-belching buses pour through cities and make crossing streets a perilious exercise.

To Craft, it’s a war that claims over 30 lives day.

“It’s a war from the standpoint that people are being slaughtered,” he said.

“It’s the innocents who are dying — young people and children. The hospitals are full 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In some ways even more tragic are the number of head injuries and cases of brain damage.”

Vietnam has fallen in love with the motorcycle, a symbol of its post-war economic development, but they have been far less happy to adopt helmets.

“That rice cooker is bad for my look,” complained Nguyen Linh Tam, a 21-year-old student with a trendy scooter and a bright blond mop of hair, the latest in South Korean-inspired urban hip.

“If the police don’t get too tough, I won’t wear a helmet. Let’s see what other people do.”

Craft has heard it all before.

“Vietnamese have a million reasons not to wear a helmet,” he said. “It messes up my hair. It makes me look like I’m from the countryside. I’m not going very far. I can’t hear. I can’t see. It’s too hot.”

To change attitudes, Craft has lobbied government leaders, organised pop concerts, had Miss Vietnam 2006 Mai Phuong Thuy put on a helmet, and launched hard-hitting advertising campaigns with graphic images of road victims.

It’s starting to pay off.

Craft estimates the ratio of riders wearing helmets has risen from three percent half a year ago to a respectable 10-15 percent in the cities this week, and up to 80-90 percent in some rural areas.

His group manufactures a tropical standard, bicycle-style helmet that is cooler and frees up peripheral vision. Daily sales have shot up from a few dozen a year ago to 3,000-5,000 today, he said.

Craft has watched the last-minute rush with satisfaction.

“What we have seen in the past 48 hours is almost unbelievable,” he said. “The population has now given up on the notion that the government is going to change their mind at the 11th hour.”

Not everybody is on board just yet.

In the remote northern Son La province, ethnic Thai communities — whose married women traditionally grow their hair several metres long and tie it into enormous buns — say no helmet on the market fits their hairstyles.

In Hanoi, Tran Van Tuan, a veteran motorcycle taxi driver, has bought two helmets already but is enjoying the last days of the wind blow through his hair as he ducked and weaved through thick urban traffic.

Asked why, he gave a reason not even Craft has heard before.

“When everybody starts to wear rice cookers on their heads,” he said, “we will look like we all come from another planet. We’ll look like we’re living in the 25th century.”

Postcard: Hanoi

 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1692024,00.html

The Vietnamese love their motorbikes but have long seen helmets as both uncomfortable and uncool. In Vietnam’s chaotic capital, a new push for safety over fashion.

Thousands of motorbikes sweving at high speed and near misses at every corner can make the roaring streets of Hanoi a terrifying place for the uninitiated. But for Vietnamese teenagers like Trinh Thanh Van, the motorized maelstrom is a party on wheels. It’s 8 p.m. on a weeknight, and 19-year-old Van is out on her red Honda Wave, two girlfriends perched on the back. The trio dart through ever shifting streams of motorbikes as they look for new friends. It’s a typical evening of luon lo (literally, “wandering”), a nightly ritual in which young Vietnamese cruise, flirt and flaunt their finest fashions.

But there’s one traditional biker accessory that Van and her stylish friends avoid: crash helmets. They aren’t alone. Fewer than 10% of riders wear helmets in a country where motorbikes make up 90% of road traffic. “For us, helmets aren’t fashionable,” admits Van’s friend Ha during a roadside chat. Van reluctantly agrees: “If girls have to wear helmets, no one will see their beautiful hairstyles and makeup.”

Soon, though, Vietnam’s motorcyclists won’t have a choice. On Dec. 15, a new law will require motorbike riders and passengers to wear helmets on the road. The law marks an effort by authorities in the communist-ruled nation to effect a huge societal change while saving lives. Some 14,000 Vietnamese died in traffic accidents last year alone, 80% of them from head injuries.

The motorbike is the symbol of Vietnam’s economic transformation over the past 20 years, the result of reforms allowing private enterprise to take root. As often as not, a newly moneyed family’s first major purchase has been a shiny motorbike. Fifteen years ago, the country had only 500,000 of the vehicles; today there are 22 million. But Vietnam’s love affair with the motorbike has come at a price. Besides the death toll, 23,000 riders each year suffer debilitating brain damage from injuries that could have been prevented by helmets, according to the nonprofit Asia Injury Prevention Foundation (AIPF).

Despite the danger, however, most Vietnamese have resisted pleas to wear helmets–dubbed rice cookers–complaining that they’re too hot and uncomfortable and even that they block the peripheral vision crucial to executing split-second swerves. And many doubt that the government will be able to enforce its new helmet law. Six years ago, it passed a similar decree but retreated in the face of popular opposition. In fact, for an authoritarian regime, Vietnam’s government has an awful lot of trouble enforcing its most basic traffic laws. Motorcyclists regularly ignore red lights and pull into traffic without so much as a glance around.

Still, the government insists it means business with the helmet law. Thousands of extra police will be dispatched nationwide to pull over bareheaded drivers and issue steep fines of up to 200,000 dong (around $13)–about a quarter of the per capita monthly income in 2006 and, significantly, the average price of a helmet. To underline its “No excuses” message, the government has also launched a massive TV ad campaign featuring gruesome images of head-trauma victims.

AIPF is taking a different tack, promoting helmets as fashion items. The group’s commercial arm manufactures “tropical” helmets with air vents, floral designs and racing stripes. Miss Vietnam 2006, Mai Phuong Thuy, has joined the cause, posing for promotional posters wearing a helmet with a stained-glass motif. Street-side helmet stands have recently popped up on virtually every corner.

In spite of the campaign, attitudes are unlikely to change overnight. Van has already been in two accidents, luckily escaping serious injury, and knows she should be wearing a helmet. She just doesn’t want to be the only one. “After the new law, when everyone else is wearing helmets, then I guess I will too,” she says. On Vietnam’s mean streets, the fashion police just might play a larger part in saving lives than the average traffic cop.