US embassy cable - 04HANOI330

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 HANOI 000330 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR G/TIP, EAP/BCLTV, EAP/RSP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KWMN, KCRM, ELAB, CB, CH, MY, RP, VM, OMIG, TIP, LABOR 
SUBJECT:  TIP IN VIETNAM: VISIT OF G/TIP PROGRAM OFFICER 
GREGORY HOLLIDAY PROVIDES SOME GOOD NEWS 
 
REF: A. 03 Hanoi 2323 B. 03 Hanoi 3288 
 
1. Summary:  G/TIP Foreign Affairs Officer Gregory 
Holliday's meetings in Vietnam were productive and reflected 
the hard work and effort Vietnam is putting into the fight 
against trafficking in persons.  He heard about the GVN's 
increasing attention to trafficking and about recent changes 
to how the GVN is addressing the problem, including the 
issue of the regulation and control of labor export 
companies.  In addition, he focused on specific programs run 
by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and OXFAM 
Quebec.  The September 2003 GVN interagency conference on 
trafficking, the new GVN labor decree regarding labor 
exports, the Ministry of Public Security's (MPS) new unit to 
focus on trafficking, distribution of the UNICEF-MPS 
reports, and indications of success on the northern 
trafficking front were all welcome signs that the GVN takes 
TIP seriously and is making progress in combating it.  End 
Summary. 
 
CENTRAL LEVEL PICTURE 
--------------------- 
 
2. In Vietnam, the agencies responsible for addressing TIP 
issues are the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the Border 
Army, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Labor, 
Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA), and the Women's 
Union.  While in Vietnam, Mr. Holliday had the opportunity 
to meet with MPS and MOLISA at the central level.  He also 
met with Women's Union representatives in Bac Giang and Lang 
Son provinces, and UNODC staff who are working directly with 
the Ministry of Justice on a U.S.-funded legislative reform 
project, as well as representatives from the International 
Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Labor 
Organization (ILO), the Asia Foundation (TAF), and UNICEF. 
 
3. MPS sent Sr. Colonel Pham Ho and Col. Dang Xuan Khang, 
Chief and Deputy Chief of Interpol Vietnam, to meet Mr. 
Holliday and talk about MPS' approach to trafficking in 
persons and Vietnam's international cooperation.  Ho said 
MPS greatly appreciated the UNODC project to strengthen the 
legislative framework for combating trafficking in persons, 
and looked forward to the second phase of that program, 
which would involve strengthening law enforcement capacity. 
Ho said that a key factor in TIP in Vietnam and elsewhere in 
Southeast Asia was the demand side, and that for TIP efforts 
to succeed it would be necessary to go after domestic 
consumers of sex services as well as international sex 
tourism customers.  Vietnam was engaged in an anti- 
prostitution campaign, he said, which was specifically 
designed to diminish trafficking in persons as well. 
 
4. Ho noted that Articles 119 and 120 of the Vietnamese 
penal code identified trafficking in persons as a crime and 
set the penalties for trafficking at 12 years in prison (for 
trafficking adults) or 20 years in prison (for trafficking 
in children).  He added that in September 2003 Deputy Prime 
Minister Pham Gia Khiem held a nationwide meeting at the 
ministerial level to discuss trafficking in persons efforts 
in Vietnam and inform all agencies that they should 
strengthen their coordination and work against TIP (ref a). 
At that meeting, MPS had been given a more central role in 
the fight against TIP, he noted.  In the intervening months, 
MPS had responded by creating a new unit devoted to 
investigating TIP and other sex-trafficking crimes, a unit 
that MPS was considering expanding into an entire division 
(ref b). 
 
5. Internationally, Vietnam was also engaged on the 
trafficking issue, Ho said.  Vietnam signed the UN 
Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1999, and in 2000 
signed the UN Convention on Transnational Crime.  In 
addition to those steps, Vietnam had 13 separate 
international legal agreements and treaties that contained 
provisions relating to TIP. 
 
6. Ho identified three main separate trafficking modalities 
from Vietnam. First, he noted the phenomenon of labor export 
fraud, where Vietnamese workers were sent overseas through a 
labor export company to a working situation where they were 
abused.  This had become especially common between Vietnam 
and Malaysia.  With recent efforts to combat labor export 
fraud in Vietnam (septel) and the implementation of a 
Vietnam-Malaysia "border agreement," Vietnamese police had 
been able to work with the Vietnamese Embassy in Kuala 
Lumpur and with Malaysian Royal Police to uncover fraud 
cases.  Ho had no details to offer on these cases, however. 
Second, Ho noted the well-documented route of poor, young 
women from the Mekong Delta region trafficked to brothels in 
Cambodia.  Ho said that Vietnamese and Cambodian police 
cooperated in battling this kind of trafficking, and 
confirmed that there had been cases of Vietnamese 
traffickers brought to justice in Vietnam.  However, he 
again lacked specifics, he admitted.  Third, Ho noted that 
criminal traffickers in northern Vietnam recruit women from 
poor and rural areas and sell them to Chinese customers as 
wives.  China's one-child policy had resulted in a lack of 
women, Ho noted, and made marriage to a Chinese girl an 
impossibly expensive proposition for some Chinese men.  This 
created a market for Vietnamese women.  Fortunately, MPS in 
Vietnam had some success in working with the Chinese police 
on these cases following a bilateral agreement.  In 2002, 
the two sides had cooperated and cracked a TIP case after 
receiving information from the victim and the family, he 
reported.  Since then, however, MPS had not had enough 
information to initiate a joint case with Chinese 
authorities.  He attributed this to the deep unwillingness 
of Vietnamese trafficking victims and their families to 
reveal details of their experiences out of fear of social 
shame and humiliation. 
 
7. Ho apologized for the lack of hard data on the number of 
TIP cases underway, as well as on the number of arrests, 
prosecutions, and convictions of traffickers.  He 
recommended asking the newly-created office of statistics in 
the Supreme People's Procuracy for data.  [Note: Embassy has 
made requests to this office already, which have been 
deflected until the new office is more firmly established. 
End note.]  When asked for his recommendations about steps 
the international community could take to assist Vietnam in 
combating TIP, Ho suggested a three-prong, prioritized 
approach that tracked the GVN's own efforts: first, the 
international community should help Vietnam reduce the 
social causes of trafficking, namely poverty and a lack of 
social and economic opportunity and education.  Development 
of poor areas and expansion of economic options for women 
would reduce the fertile trafficking ground of rural 
Vietnam.  Second, awareness campaigns to teach high-risk 
groups about the danger posed by traffickers' seductive 
promises would be a strong step in addressing the problem. 
Finally, targeted assistance to law enforcement agencies 
tasked with combating TIP - particularly MPS and the Border 
Army - should be combined with technical assistance to MOJ 
and the Supreme People's Procuracy in making and enforcing 
TIP laws to enhance the prosecution side of the TIP problem. 
He expressed a hope that the U.S. could match the GVN's 
determination in tackling the problem of trafficking in 
persons in Vietnam. 
 
MOLISA on labor exports 
----------------------- 
 
8. Holliday also met with a delegation from MOLISA, 
including representatives from the Department of Social 
Evils Prevention (Deputy Director General Nguyen Van Minh) 
and the Department of Overseas Labor (Deputy Director 
General Nguyen Ngoc Quynh), as well as Deputy Director 
General Nguyen Manh Cuong from the Department of 
International Cooperation.  Cuong said that MOLISA was 
familiar with the G/TIP office and understood its mandate, 
and had read the TIP report each year it had come out. 
MOLISA wanted to emphasize that neither the law nor the 
political will in Vietnam tolerated trafficking in persons, 
and that the GVN was committed to cooperating with the 
international community in the best way possible to combat 
the problem of trafficking in persons. 
 
9. Cuong emphasized that the primary agencies for combating 
TIP from the law enforcement standpoint were MPS and the 
Border Army.  MOLISA's role was to create employment and 
reduce poverty in order to lower the number of families and 
communities at economic risk of being trafficked.  When 
victims were trafficked, Cuong said, MOLISA had a role to 
play in integrating them back into their communities. 
 
10.  DDG Quynh reviewed the status of the current GVN labor 
code, which had been recently revised.  (Note:  current 
Vietnamese law on trafficking does not include provisions 
related specifically to labor export and exploitation, which 
are covered by other criminal statutes.  End note.) He 
emphasized that labor export businesses wanting permission 
to conduct labor export activities had to meet certain 
criteria, such as having sufficient capital, human 
resources, and training facilities.  Only after receiving a 
license to export labor could they begin negotiating 
contracts with foreign companies.  Contracted labor would 
then receive training, which in addition to job-specific 
training normally included: 
-language of the destination country 
-laws of the destination country and Vietnamese labor laws 
-traditions and customs of the destination country, and 
-conditions of the contract and contact information of the 
Vietnamese Embassy in the destination country. 
11. Quynh added that under the code, labor export companies 
had to maintain representatives in the destination countries 
to help workers deal with emergencies.  In the event of 
emergencies involving exploitation or abuse of workers, the 
code and GVN policy stated that the labor export company, 
MOLISA, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared 
responsibility.  The new labor decree established a fund to 
provide financial aid to deal with unexpected problems faced 
by Vietnamese workers overseas, he added.  While the details 
of implementation of that fund were still being worked out, 
Quynh said MOLISA anticipated that the fund would be of the 
most use in cases where the employer was bankrupt.  To 
attend to the problems of Vietnamese workers overseas, the 
GVN had created 6 labor attache offices overseas to assist 
laborers in trouble in the countries that had the most 
overseas Vietnamese workers, Quynh noted. 
 
12. Quynh said that the Vietnamese labor code owed a lot to 
the Philippines' labor export regulations, due to a study 
trip to the Philippines by MOLISA officials and a month-long 
consulting trip to Vietnam by the former head of the 
Philippines labor export office.  Quynh said he believed the 
Vietnamese law was better at protecting worker rights than 
the Philippines law, and noted that Vietnam provided more 
training on local laws and language than the Philippines 
did.  He added that Vietnam exceeded the Philippines in the 
requirement that the sending organization must have a 
presence in the destination country.  Quynh said that there 
were two kinds of abuse MOLISA was concerned about: one 
involving unlicensed labor export companies sending workers 
abroad, and the other involving licensed companies who broke 
the rules.  In both cases, he said, MOLISA contacted 
Vietnamese law enforcement to deal with the problem.  He 
added that, in the case of legal labor export companies, 
most of the complaints MOLISA heard involved Vietnamese 
workers who felt that the sending companies had not honored 
the terms of their contracts.  In "quite a few cases," 
MOLISA had sanctioned errant labor export companies through 
permanent withdrawal of labor export licenses, suspension of 
licenses, or suspension of licenses in certain labor markets 
only.  If the labor export company were found to be actually 
trafficking in humans, there would be a permanent withdrawal 
of the license and subsequent law enforcement action, he 
pledged. 
 
13. When asked about cases where representatives of labor 
export companies had reportedly gone to the family members 
of Vietnamese workers who had complained about abuse 
overseas, Quynh said approaching families was "unusual" and 
only occurred when a worker had left a contract and was no 
longer in contact with the employing or sending business. 
In those cases, he said, companies sometimes would contact 
the families in order to get in touch with the worker and 
convince him to return to work and not break the terms of 
his contract.  In reality, he said, the only reason to 
contact families was to "expedite solutions to problems." 
Quynh said he did not see a potential conflict of interest 
in having a labor export company investigate abuses in an 
employing company with which it had a labor export contract. 
In some extreme cases, however, it was necessary for the 
Vietnamese Embassy or even MOLISA to get involved in a case. 
He himself had been to Malaysia in 2003 to look at issues 
involving working conditions for Vietnamese workers and to 
talk to workers.  MOLISA did not do that on a regular basis, 
he emphasized, but if a strong complaint or compelling 
reason emerged, his department would act, he promised. 
 
IO and NGO projects going well 
------------------------------ 
 
14. Holliday also met with the project managers of UNODC's 
U.S.-funded antitrafficking project and officials in a rural 
northern commune in Lang Son province who are implementing 
an OXFAM Quebec antitrafficking project.  The UNODC project 
staff reported great progress in the initial phase of their 
project, which involves working with international legal 
experts and an interagency team within the GVN to review 
Vietnamese antitrafficking legislation and recommend changes 
or amendments that would allow Vietnam to sign the UN 
protocol on trafficking.  The UNODC team had just come from 
the first day of a five-day seminar at the Ministry of 
Justice, and reported excellent attendance and cooperation 
with the Vietnamese ministries involved.  Hoang Van Lai, 
national project coordinator, said it was possible that the 
legal review could be completed and recommendations sent up 
the line in as little as three months.  This could result in 
legislation changes by mid-2005.  Lai opined that 
trafficking in persons was the area in which the GVN was 
most committed to cooperating with the international 
community.  He looked forward to beginning the second phase 
of the project, which would involve creating training 
courses for Vietnamese law enforcement, especially Border 
Army units in trafficking hotspots such as Quang Ninh and An 
Giang provinces. 
 
15. The Women's Union and the People's Committee of the 
commune of Hoang Van Thu in Lang Son province (a 
mountainous, rural province on the Chinese border) received 
Mr. Holliday.  According to Hoang Quoc Hoi, the Chairman of 
the People's Committee in the commune, Hoang Van Thu had 
suffered for years from trafficking in persons.  Women were 
trafficked to China to become wives of Chinese men, and 
teenagers left the commune to go to Ho Chi Minh City to 
work.  They were sometimes trafficked by strangers, or by 
people they knew, and were "taken advantage of".  Ms. Dang 
Kieu Van, an officer of the Provincial Women's Union, 
credited the awareness raising and economic opportunity 
program run by OXFAM Quebec, in addition to heightened 
attention to education and economic development from the 
central level and the province, with reducing the number of 
trafficked women and children in the commune from an average 
of 8-9 per year from 1990-2002 down to zero in 2003. 
According to Ms. Ngo Thi Thuy, Chairman and President of the 
local chapter of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, a core group 
of 15 volunteers (mostly from the local Women's Union, and 
including returned trafficking victims) had been trained in 
anti-trafficking awareness raising and had held large 
awareness-raising meetings in all the villages of the 
commune.  They had reached hundreds of people, possibly even 
a thousand, Ms. Thuy claimed, adding that it was "certain" 
that the message had reached most of the commune.  That 
message, along with the roads and electricity and schools 
that the government brought to the isolated valley, were 
what had reduced trafficking to zero in 2003, said Ms. Hoang 
Thi Ha of the district Women's Union.  The officials 
Holliday met were familiar with Decree 766 against 
trafficking in persons, and with the September 2003 meeting 
that reviewed the five-year progress of the decree and urged 
greater action.  The group said it was proud of Lang Son's 
accomplishments and thought the commune's success could be 
replicated elsewhere in the province.  [Note: Embassy Hanoi 
has submitted a Lang Son-based awareness-raising project 
similar to this for funding consideration under the 2004 EAP 
Women's Initiative.  End note.] 
 
16.  In a dinner with representatives from trafficking- 
focused NGOs such as the International Organization for 
Migration (IOM), the International Labor Organization (ILO), 
the Asia Foundation (TAF) and UNICEF, Holliday discussed 
those organizations' TIP projects and observations on 
working with the GVN on trafficking.  IOM described its 
efforts in Ho Chi Minh City to work with returned victims of 
trafficking, and confirmed that victims who returned from 
abroad were not subject to "reeducation" or forced into 
rehabilitation centers.  However, the problem of 
reintegration was complicated by the severe social stigma 
felt by returnees.  ILO representative Rosemary Greve noted 
that ILO's trafficking project, part of the Mekong Subregion 
regional trafficking project, was currently on hiatus, 
waiting for the second phase to begin.  TAF Representative 
Jonathan Stromseth cited its awareness-raising and victim 
assistance programs in the high-risk provinces of An Giang 
and Quang Ninh, and said that Provincial-level Women's Union 
officials were often the best, most effective counterparts 
on TIP.  UNICEF Representative Anthony Bloomberg said that 
his organization had success in working with all levels of 
the GVN on trafficking, especially MPS.  He noted that 
UNICEF had worked with the General Department of Police 
(within MPS) to produce reports on the trafficking situation 
in the north and in the south.  The report on the north had 
been released in January 2003, and the report on the south 
was due to be released shortly.  These reports, he noted, 
contained extensive research and data on victims and 
traffickers, as well as the general regional trafficking 
situation.  In his opinion, the GVN's failure to share 2003 
trafficking statistics was likely based on a lack of 
organized data rather than an unwillingness to cooperate, as 
evidenced by MPS participation in and distribution of the 
reports containing statistics from 1999-2002. 
 
17. Comment: There were some disappointments in Mr. 
Holliday's trip.  The central-level Women's Union, for 
example, was unable to meet with him due to a competing 
event in Dien Bien city far to the northwest, and the police 
unit recently assigned to combat TIP was unable to attend 
the meeting held at Interpol's main office.  But the rest of 
Holliday's meetings were productive and reflected the hard 
work and effort Vietnam is putting into the fight against 
trafficking.  The 9/03 interagency conference on 
trafficking, the new labor decree regarding labor exports, 
MPS' new unit to focus on trafficking, distribution of the 
UNICEF-MPS reports, and indications of success on the 
northern trafficking front were all welcome signs that the 
GVN takes TIP seriously and is making progress in combating 
it. 
 
18.  Holliday has/has not cleared this message. 
BURGHARDT