Search

State censorship of the Formosa Vietnam case

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to

Ortmann (2023, p.8):

The Formosa protest one year later provides a contrasting case study [to protest against the Vinh Tan coal power plant] to understand when repression is a strategic choice by the regime. The protest occurred in response to massive pollution caused by the Taiwanese steel producer Formosa-Ha Tinh Steel. Perhaps the most important difference was the media coverage. While the Vinh Tan protest had garnered significant, relatively objective coverage in the Vietnamese press, the Formosa case was highly censored, and whatever can be found is highly biased against the protesters who were supposedly only interested in harming Viet Nam’s national interests. To understand what happened, it is necessary to draw on foreign media, which covered the protests over many months, as well as other academic sources.

Transnational Formosa Activism in Vietnam

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to

In social science literature, the Formosa Vietnam disaster is considered a key example for the importance of transnational environmental advocacy networks (Fan et al. 2021). Catholic priests and the US-based organization Justice for Formosa Victims (JfFV) have called for the release of imprisoned activists and for adequate compensation of impacted fisheries. More recently, after several attempts to gain jurisdiction in Vietnam, a group of 7,800 plaintiffs launched a civil lawsuit against Formosa in Taiwan’s supreme court. Beyond the repression experienced by activists in Vietnam, lawyers involved in the case have cited limited recourse to international law in Taiwan, expensive court filing fees, and other bureaucratic measures as challenges to the lawsuit.

2016 Vietnam marine disaster

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to
In 2012, Formosa began construction of the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel plant in Central Vietnam. Initially, the facility was meant to be built next to the Yunlin County Complex, but concern over water pollution – especially threats to Taiwan’s white dolphin population (Winkler 2019) – pushed the project abroad. Only shortly after the steel plant began operating in 2016, the release of toxic chemicals polluted an estimated 150 miles of Vietnam’s coastline. The death of hundreds of tons of fish and job loss of an estimated 50,000 – 100,000 fisher people marked a turning point for Vietnamese environmental movements and politics (Jobin 2020). After several weeks of silence, Formosa took public responsibility for the disaster and paid $500 million in compensation to the government. However, anger over the magnitude of the disaster and unequal distribution of funds led to large scale protest movements across the country. The government responded with violent police interventions, imprisonment of protestors, and tight control over media reporting, casting activists as agents of outside forces (Ortmann 2021, 288). Social scientists Stephan Ortmann explains the severity of this response with the nationwide spread of protests, exacerbated by the protestors' use of decentralized social media and involvement by the Catholic church, as well as international attention, all of which posed serious challenges to the legitimacy of Vietnam’s government (Ortmann 2021, 300).

TS: 2016 Vietnam Marine Disaster

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to

  • TS: From April 6, 2016 until the end of the month, hundreds of tons of wild and farmed fish died along about 250 kilometers of coastline around the periphery of Formosa Steel, and the pollution spread to the south, affecting a total of four provinces (Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue). The fishermen of the northern province of Nghe An claimed they had also been impacted, but the government denied that the pollution spread to the north. (Jobin & Ying 2020)

  • TS: In April 2016, a dive by fishermen also found a 1.5km long drainage pipe of one-meter diameter coming from Formosa Steel that was discharging yellow wastewater onto the seabed. (Jobin & Ying 2020)

  • TS: The Vietnam Fisheries Association pointed out that red tide generally kills shallow-sea fish, but in this case there were many deep-sea fish involved, so the red tide seemed to have little to do with this case, and the cause was therefore most likely human pollution (Green Trees 2016; Maodun 2016). (Jobin & Ying 2020)

  • TS: In July 2016, the Vietnam Environmental Protection Agency (VEPA) provided the Vietnamese National Assembly with a 20-page report detailing the results of a survey conducted in central Vietnam the previous May by over one hundred scientists (including several foreign scholars): 115 tons of wild fish, 140 tons of farmed fish, 67 tons of oysters, 10 tons of crabs and 7 tons of shrimp had been lost; 450 hectares of the ocean, 40% to 60% of the coral, and 40% to 60% of the seabed were destroyed (Jobin & Ying 2020)

  • TS: According to the Vietnam Environmental Protection Agency (VEPA), the pollution prevented 17,682 fishing boats from going to sea, causing 40,966 people (176,285 people including fishermen’s families) to suffer a major economic loss.  (Jobin & Ying 2020)

  • TS: According to an official statement made by the Vietnamese government in June 2016, followed the next month by a report from the Vietnam Environmental Protection Agency (VEPA), the main causes of the massive deaths of fish and shrimp were the high concentrations of benzene, cyanide and ferric hydroxide emitted by Formosa Steel. The two most serious violations of Formosa Steel’s 53 violations were its wastewater treatment system and the release of hydrogen cyanide, a colorless but extremely toxic substance. Zyklon B, a colorless but highly toxic hydrogen cyanide also known as prussic acid, was used by the German Nazis in their “Final Solution” during World War II to kill millions of Jews. Benzene corrodes the skin and can damage the lungs, liver, kidneys, the heart and the central nervous system, possibly causing coma. On April 24, 2016, divers employed by a contractor of Formosa Steel suffered health problems; one of them died on the way to hospital. Although the release of pollutants such as hydrogen cyanide could certainly have caused the sudden death of the divers, the divers were actually protected by oxygen masks and diving suits, so the causality between the pollution and the death remains mysterious. (Jobin & Ying 2020)

TS: State media and environmental campaigns in Vietnam

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to

Scholars argue that Vietnamese environmental movements and civil society have been stifled by one-party authoritarian rule, resulting in short lived and fragmented activist campaigns (Ortmann 2017; 2021; Bruun 2020; Wischermann et al. 2021). Notably, the government has established its own environmental organizations, efforts of which keep getting undercut by close business ties and other conflicts of interest (Ortman 2021, 275). Independent NGOs and journalism, in turn, have been tolerated, but all organizations are required to register with the government, preventing funding expansion and growth (ibid). This asymmetry has led to competition with established international organizations like Greenpeace that offer better job opportunities and resources (2021, 292). Finally, though all media in Vietnam are owned by the government and subject to censorship, journalists benefit from a certain degree of freedom that has enabled critical coverage of environmental pollution (Ortmann 2021, 280).

pece_annotation_1476645700

erin_tuttle
Annotation of
In response to

This organizations aims to provide a support system for returning veterans, more specifically to ensure access to any type of medical support they may need and assist them in readapting to society after extended periods of time in the military.

pece_annotation_1476645719

erin_tuttle
Annotation of
In response to

The organization membership includes two subsets, first the organization membership includes any and all active serviceman, veterans, and limited membership for their families. The other portion of membership includes administrators, doctors, and public health workers who work to provide the services needed.