US embassy cable - 04HANOI2499

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HANOI 002499 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR G/TIP, EAP/BCLTV, EAP/RSP, INL/AAE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, KWMN, KCRM, ELAB, VM, OMIG, TIP, LABOR 
SUBJECT:  TIP IN VIETNAM: DISTRACTION FROM THE REAL ISSUE 
 
1. (SBU) SUMMARY AND COMMENT: The Ministry of Labor, 
Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) used a recent meeting 
with Emboffs and a visiting G/TIP officer to complain about 
the decision to resurrect a five year-old labor trafficking 
case in the 2004 TIP report.  MOLISA challenged some of the 
facts in the case and advised us to be aware that the 
victims in the case had "complicated motivations" that 
should be weighed carefully in the assessment of their 
allegations.  Embassy notes that this was a one-time case 
that occurred five years ago and has not recurred, despite 
the fact that the number of workers leaving Vietnam each 
year has gone up over four hundred percent.  In the years 
since the victims were trafficked, there have been 
significant changes and reforms in Vietnam's labor export 
laws, and the officials responsible for the original abuses 
have been arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, 
and after serving their time, released.  The USG's continued 
concentration on this historic case hurts our efforts to 
engage Vietnam on more pressing aspects of the TIP problem, 
and damages our credibility in other areas of the 
relationship.  End summary. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
MOLISA: WE THOUGHT THIS CASE WAS HISTORY, BUT SINCE YOU 
BRING IT UP. . . . 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
 
2. (U) Nguyen Manh Cuong, the Deputy Director of MOLISA's 
International Cooperation Department, said to visiting G/TIP 
staffer Leaksmy Norin in a meeting September 8 that MOLISA 
was "not satisfied" with the contents of the 2004 TIP report 
on Vietnam.  He was referring in particular to the mention 
of the Daewoosa case, which he noted was "long ago" and a 
source of "complicated misunderstandings" between the United 
States and Vietnam. 
 
3. (U) At the meeting, Cuong's colleague, Vu Minh Xuan, 
deputy chief of the Marketing Section of the Department of 
Overseas Labor (DOLAB), launched into an impassioned defense 
of the two labor export companies implicated in the Daewoosa 
case.  He stated that there had been no exploitation of 
workers and that, on the contrary, work conditions for 
Vietnamese Daewoosa workers were better than they were for 
other laborers in American Samoa.  He said he himself had 
visited the factory and could attest to this, as well as the 
fact that the labor export companies had obeyed their 
contracts and all necessary procedures.  Norin and Poloff 
both responded to Xuan, noting that the fact of exploitation 
and abusive labor conditions at the Daewoosa factory had 
been established beyond a doubt, and suggested that the 
factory owners had misled Xuan during his visit.  Cuong, 
visibly displeased with Xuan, shut down his colleague's 
efforts to protest further the facts of the case. 
 
4. (U) Cuong stipulated that the workers in the Daewoosa 
case had been abused, but added that some of the workers had 
"complicated motivations" in making accusations against 
Vietnam.  Some of them, he noted, were associated with 
"hostile forces" in the U.S. [Note: "hostile forces" is a 
term the GVN often uses to describe certain vocal groups of 
former Vietnamese refugees who continue to try to undermine 
the Vietnamese government and U.S.-SRV relations.  End 
note.]  Also, he noted to Poloff after the meeting, some of 
the victims wanted to stay in the United States and some had 
filed civil suits.  "We have discussed all of this for many 
hours already," Cuong noted during the meeting, "several 
years ago when this case occurred.  I thought we understood 
each other then, but now it seems we have to do it again." 
Cuong offered to open a new dialogue on the Daewoosa case 
with U.S. Embassy officers to help improve the USG's 
understanding of the GVN position. 
 
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COMMENT 
------- 
 
5. (SBU) Comment: The atmospherics of the MOLISA meeting 
were chilly.  Even leaving aside the somewhat extreme 
revisionist history espoused by DOLAB's marketing officer, 
the GVN does not see why the USG would bring up an isolated 
five year-old case except as a political exercise in Vietnam- 
bashing.  As Cuong pointed out, many of the facts in the 
Daewoosa case were established through depositions and 
affidavits taken from victims, and allegations of abuse of 
returned victims came from those with links to anti-SRV 
groups and from those who were simultaneously applying for 
asylum.  The allegations of abuse of returned victims have 
never, to our knowledge, been independently verified.  The 
GVN maintains that the victims in the Daewoosa case have 
"complicated" motivations that should be weighed when 
evaluating claims of abuse. 
 
6. (U) Comment continued: The two Vietnamese companies 
involved in the Daewoosa case, IMS and TC-12, were and are 
for-profit entities owned by GVN ministries.  However, they 
did not and do not function as "utilities" or take day-to- 
day direction and management from the GVN.  The GVN's 
sanction of these companies and the arrest, prosecution, 
conviction, and imprisonment of the companies' senior 
executives for crimes related to the Daewoosa case appear to 
demonstrate that they were not acting in accordance with GVN 
policy or instructions.  The GVN maintains that the case 
represented the actions of rogue executives who were 
subsequently punished.  The fact that, in the five years 
since the case, no similar cases have occurred supports that 
assertion. 
 
7. (U) Comment continued: Since the Daewoosa case, the GVN 
has made significant changes to its labor code, including 
the way labor export is administered.  New protections 
include: 
 
     - the codification of the rights and responsibilities 
of both labor export companies and workers, which gives 
workers a legal foundation on which to base efforts to seek 
compensation from labor export companies in disputes; 
 
     - the establishment of nine labor attache positions in 
the top consumer countries for Vietnamese labor to allow the 
GVN to collect information directly on working conditions 
and labor disputes without filtering it through interested 
parties, either workers or labor export companies; 
 
     - the funding of a new account for the protection and 
welfare of overseas workers, allowing the GVN to assist 
overseas workers in distress without requiring them to rely 
on the labor export companies or their overseas employers; 
 
     - the creation of standards of operation for labor 
export companies and mechanisms for evaluation, monitoring, 
and de-licensing if necessary. 
 
Finally, in particularly difficult or high-profile cases, 
such as the series of labor disputes involving Vietnamese 
workers on construction sites in Malaysia in early 2004, 
MOLISA will send inspectors and officials to supplement the 
labor attache office's efforts to establish facts and assist 
workers. 
 
8. (U) Comment continued: The absence of repeat Daewoosa- 
style labor exploitation cases involving Vietnamese workers 
or Vietnamese labor export companies in the five years since 
the Daewoosa workers were trafficked in 1999 (despite a more 
than 400 percent increase in the number of workers sent 
overseas) is a result of two complementary factors: the 
deterrent created by the severe sanctions applied to IMS and 
TC12 and their managers; and the substantial profits 
available to labor export companies from the high and 
growing legitimate demand for workers. 
 
9. (U) Comment continued: The GVN has made significant 
efforts to reconcile the competing goals of protecting 
worker interests and promoting labor export despite 
operating in the administrative and regulatory context of a 
developing country with limited human and material 
resources.  The fact that no labor trafficking cases have 
been reported by any source in the five years since the 
trafficking of the Daewoosa victims is proof that, whatever 
systemic weaknesses may remain in the Vietnamese labor 
export sector, they are not severe. 
 
10. (U) Comment continued: In contrast, trafficking of women 
and children to China, Cambodia, and further afield is a 
significant and possibly increasing problem.  The GVN is 
seriously concerned about this and is applying increasing 
financial and political resources to it.  U.S. engagement on 
trafficking in Vietnam would be much more effective - and 
more welcome - if it focused on the daily reality of sex- 
related trafficking instead of the hypothetical possibility 
of a recurrence of a problem that occurred once five years 
ago. 
 
11. (U) Comment continued: In addition to complicating our 
efforts to engage the Vietnamese on trafficking, the 
continued emphasis on this old case undercuts our "look to 
the future rather than the past" message and hurts our 
credibility when pressing on other issues of importance, 
such as IPR, religious freedom, and human rights.  We should 
use the upcoming TIP Watch List review to refocus our 
attention away from the Daewoosa case and back on the issue 
of women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation. 
MARINE