Blogger Duong Van Thai to Be Tried in October; Facebook User Fined for Posting ‘False Information’ About Thich Minh Tue
Key Events * Blogger Duong Van Thai, Who Was Abducted in Thailand, to be Tried on Oct. 30 * Lam Dong Police
The Vietnam Briefing, which is released every Monday morning Vietnam time, looks at Vietnam’s political developments of the past week.
Vietnam’s national television under fire for using pseudoscience to humiliate people
COVID-19 Turned Vietnam’s State-Run Union’s Greatest Weakness Into Its Biggest Strength
Joe Buckley/The Diplomat/July 29, 2021
“The state-led Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) is Vietnam’s only legal trade union federation. It is subordinate to the ruling Communist Party, embedded in the structures of the party-state, and receives a lot of funding from it. Government leaders often make speeches reinforcing how committed they are to strengthening the VGCL and reminding people that the Confederation is an arm of the state. You will find a union office, staffed by full-time officials, at almost every level of Vietnam’s administration, from the impressive and imposing national headquarters on Hanoi’s Quan Su street down to modest and charming ward and district-level offices throughout the country. In individual companies, union reps are often human resource managers or similar.
Due to this, the VGCL has been heavily, and often rightly, criticized for being unable to represent and struggle for workers properly. The VGCL has never organized a strike, for example, and often serves as a channel to inform workers of government and company policies rather than to challenge them.”
In Vietnam, Civil Society Is Picking up the Slack Where Authorities Struggle
Luke Hunt/The Diplomat/July 28, 2021
“The Communist authorities in Vietnam risk becoming increasingly marginalized after failing to curb the spread of COVID-19. Civil society groups are now taking the initiative in combating the pandemic amid harsh lockdowns in the country’s south.”
America Can—and Should—Vaccinate the World
Helene Gayle, Gordon LaForge, and Anne-Marie Slaughter/Foreign Affairs/March 19, 2021
“The Biden administration is right to want to take the lead in vaccinating the world, for a host of reasons both self-interested and altruistic. But it should not fall into the trap of trying to beat Russia and China at their own game—handing out vaccines to specific countries based on their geostrategic importance and the amount of attention they are receiving from rival powers.
Rather, Biden should pursue abroad the sort of “all in” unity approach that he has proclaimed at home. His administration should focus less on strategic advantage than on vaccinating the largest number of people worldwide in the shortest amount of time. In so doing, the United States would concentrate on what the world’s peoples have in common—susceptibility to this and many other viruses—regardless of the nature of their governments.”
Research: “The Ambiguous Legacy of Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam’s Second Republic (1967–1975)”
Sean Fear/Journal of Vietnamese Studies/March 01, 2016
“Although recent English-language Vietnam War scholarship has devoted considerable attention to reassessing the Ngô Đình Diệm era, contemporaneous South Vietnamese interpretations of the president’s tenure have been largely overlooked. Contrary to prevailing assumptions that his influence ended abruptly with his 1963 murder, Ngô Đình Diệm was a hotly debated figure long after his death. Moreover, his contested legacy came to symbolize South Vietnam’s enduring political, regional and religious schisms, contributing to and reinforcing his country’s profound social fragmentation. The fluid and ambiguous memory that Vietnamese had of his time in office had a substantial impact on subsequent political developments, establishing patterned dynamics of political conflict that endured throughout the Second Republic and providing conceptual yardsticks against which subsequent politicians and political developments were measured. Ngô Đình Diệm’s fraught symbolic resonance and significant posthumous political impact are therefore crucial dimensions to consider in evaluating his legacy.”
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