Vovinam included in 26th SEA Games in Indonesia

Vietnamese martial art Vovinam will be an official event at the 26th South East Asian Games in Indonesia next year, according to an announcement made at a three-day meeting which ended in Jakarta May 30.

At first, most representatives at the meeting agreed to the proposal, but officials from Malaysia and the Philippines did not.

However, as the host of the next biennial SEA Games, Indonesia strongly supported the idea and the Vietnamese delegation eventually persuaded everyone to agree.

Other events like Muay Thai kickboxing and body building were proposed but they were not accepted.

The SEA Games Vovinam competitions will take place on the island of Bali.

The World Vovinam Federation and Vietnam Vovinam Federation will send leading instructors and coaches to the countries in the region to provide training.

Reported by M. Hien

Binh Duong remains at the top of V-League

Binh Duong remains at the top of Vietnam’s top-tier V-League after a 2-0 away win over low-ranked side Nam Dinh in the 15th round at Nam Dinh Stadium on Sunday.

The hosts Nam Dinh led an attack from the start, meaning that visitors Binh Duong had to play defensively.

After being under pressure for the first few minutes, the 2007-08 V-League champs Binh Duong improved their defense, started attacking and created chances.

Binh Duong took the lead after Nigerian defender Egbo Osita headed home a free kick by Vu Phong from the right.

The visitors Binh Duong scored again four minutes later after striker Anh Duc’s header defeated Nam Dinh’s goalkeeper Ngoc Tu for the second time.

Binh Duong now leads the league with 31 points while Nam Dinh, with only eight points, are very likely to be relegated to the country’s second-tier First Division.

Reigning champs Da Nang slid one spot to third with 28 points after being held to a 1-1 draw by the Mekong Delta team Dong Thap on home soil at Chi Lang Stadium.

The draw kept Dong Thap in fourth position, three points adrift of Da Nang, who have booked their berth in Asia’s second-tier AFC Cup quarterfinals.

Hanoi T&T climbed one place to second with 28 points after taking a 3-1 away victory at Nha Trang Stadium over Khanh Hoa, who remains in eighth position.

In other action, 2003-04 league champions Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) drew 1-1 with Hoa Phat Hanoi at Hang Day Stadium.

HAGL remained in tenth position while the Hanoi side fell three spots to twelfth out of the 14 teams in the league.

The league’s 2005-06 champions Dong Tam Long An (DTLA) took a 1-0 away win over the 2001 champions Nghe An at Vinh Stadium.

DTLA climbed one place to 11th with 18 points while Nghe An remained in seventh with 20 points.

Ninh Binh moved one place up to fifth after a 3-0 home win over Navibank Saigon, who remains in penultimate place with 11 points.

Thanh Hoa defeated Hai Phong Cement 4-1 and jumped two places to ninth with 19 points while Hai Phong slid one position to sixth with 23 points.

Source: Thanh Nien

Singer threatens paper with defamation suit

Vietnam’s Queen of Pop and mother-to-be Ho Ngoc Ha is filing a lawsuit against a newpaper for running a story about her teenage marriage that the diva said was “untrue and defamatory.”

“I cannot keep silent,” Ha said.

“Personally, as an artist, I can choose silence when my private life is being severely violated. But when the stories were run for the purpose of defaming my entire family, my parents cannot keep silent.”

Ha and her family on Friday began working with lawyer Nguyen Minh Thuan in Ho Chi Minh City to file a lawsuit against Phap Luat va Cuoc Song (Law and Life), which ran the story on May 12.

The story came after Ha gave media interviews confirming her recent pregnancy in April.

The father is playboy and car collector Nguyen Quoc Cuong, or Cuong Dollar, the son of one of the richest women in Vietnam.

Ha said the recent story lied when it said she had previously married at 16 and had lied about being pregnant to marry another rich playboy in Hanoi.

Ha, 26, said the story by Nguyen Huu Nung, 52, an acquaintance of her mother-in-law in Hanoi, not only violated her private life but deliberately reviled her family.

She said her marriage in 2001 occurred when she was 17, not 16, and that she didn’t lie about being pregnant to force a marriage.

Her grandmother died in 1996 but Nung described her grandmother at the wedding as looking sad for not being placed in a good seat, Ha’s mother Nguyen Thi Huong said.

And the story said that Ha’s mother-in-law wanted to end the marriage and forced Ha to sign a paper that she would leave without any assets from her in-laws.

But Huong said she was married under the legal age of 18, so there was no point in asking her to sign a paper as she had no legal protection to ask for anything anyway.

“To share their private life or not, that’s a person’s right. Reporters can exploit artists’ lives, but they must not lie or defame a person’s family,” Huong told Thanh Nien.

Ha said unless Phap Luat va Cuoc Song apologizes publicly, she and her family would follow the case to “the very end.”

But experts in the field are debating whether or not victory is possible.

Article 38 in the Criminal Code states that individuals have the right to keep their private life secret.

The publication of information about people’s private life must be approved by the people in question, according to the law.

Lawyer Phan Ngoc Bang from the HCMC Bar Association said further considerations were needed in this case to see if any private life violation had been committed because the wedding mentioned in the report was known about publicly.

“If the report contained untrue details, the singer can complain to the publication, asking for a correction and apology. If the details cause some damage, she can ask for compensation under the law,” Bang said.

Attorney Nguyen Ngoc Hung, also from the association, said the writer had gone too deep into sensitive matters of Ha’s life and had caused “spiritual damage” by affecting her reputation and dignity.

A judge from HCMC People’s Court who didn’t want to be named said Ha needed to prove that the report had contained private details that she didn’t want to be published, “and that the publication has affected her reputation, and her image without bringing any benefits to the community.”

But the judge said the concept of a “secret private life” was an abstract subject to define in court.

He said personal secrets were protected under laws, as long as they are not a threat to the government, the community or any other individual, he said.

Prosecutor Vo Van Them from the Supreme People’s Procuracy, Vietnam’s top prosecutor’s office, said false details contained in a report could be tried in court.

Reported by Le Nga – Nguyen

Economic crime robs Vietnam of $9.3 bln in 12 years: report

Since a national program against economic crime was launched 12 years ago, more than 152,000 cases of financial malfeasance have caused more than VND177 trillion (US$9.3 billion) in losses to the economy.

But the actual number of economic transgressions is likely to be far higher as the figures represent only those cases uncovered by authorities, Le The Tiem, deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Security, said.

The cases include nearly 18,000 instances of corruption and copyright violations, Tiem told an online conference in Hanoi on Wednesday.

According to the ministry, traditional crimes are becoming more complicated, and new crimes are being imported from foreign countries with advanced equipment and devices.

In separate news on Wednesday, Mai Quoc Binh, deputy chief of the Government Inspectorate, said investigators would launch an inspection into the Lang – Hoa Lac Expressway project in Hanoi.

He said they were especially interested in checking for dodgy site clearance and compensation activities.

Work on the 30-kilometer road began ten years ago, but the construction site is still “a mess,” Binh said explaining why he was launching the unscheduled inspection.

He said the Inspectorate was interested in finding out what the project's money was being spent on. He said he was also concerned that the project had no completion date attached to it.

Last month the government also announced an investigation into the country’s first cars-only expressway, the Ho Chi Minh City – Trung Luong Highway, following allegations that the road was built using unsuitable technologies that had wasted hundreds of billions of dong.

Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre

TV channel told to remove film on ‘wildlife delicacy’

Lam Dong authorities and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Vietnam have strongly protested the broadcasting of a documentary promoting illegal wildlife meat consumption in Vietnam as a delicacy by the US Travel Channel.

Tran Xuan Viet, program officer with the WCS Vietnam said they would officially demand that the television channel to remove the film from its website and not re-broadcast it.

“We have contacted the Director of the Channel in the US and would encourage all Vietnamese citizens to contact the channel through their website” he told Thanh Nien Weekly on the phone June 8. The program’s site can be found at www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain

According to WCS, the documentary titled “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” aimed to introduce culture, tourist spots and food in Lam Dong Province’s resort town of Da Lat in the Central Highlands, and describes the meat of the Javan mouse deer (Tagulus javanicus) as a traditional specialty.

It can be seen quite clearly in the documentary that an eatery is serving wildlife meat and two people in the film crew are eating mouse deer meat, Viet said. The documentary was also posted on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeOei7OphcE.

Viet said mouse deer belongs to Group IIB of Decree 32/2006/ND-CP that means no wild individuals can be hunted or sold for commercial purposes. Only registered traders are allowed to sell its meat and violators are punishable by fines of up to VND500 million (US$26,000), he added.

“The Travel Channel’s introduction of wildlife meat could have a bad impact on ongoing wildlife conservation activities in Vietnam. They have encouraged both locals and foreign tourists to consume the meat of endangered wildlife species as a delicacy in Da Lat”.

“This would increase difficulties for involved agencies in inspecting and preventing wildlife crimes, reduce the number of individuals of wildlife species and promote the illegal hunting and trading of wildlife,” he said.

On June 8, Lam Dong Forest Protection officers raided the Thu Khoi eatery in the province’s Lac Duong District after identifying it to be the one in the documentary and found the eatery illegally selling wildlife meat.

The officers confiscated two Asiatic brush-tailed porcupines (Atherurus macrourus) weighing 1.2 kilograms in total, 4.8 kilograms of wild boar meat and ten kilograms of other meat that had been partially processed.

Nearly 50 kilograms of frozen meat were later found at another facility of the eatery that the owner, Thu, claimed to be horse meat that she used to fake deer meat. Local law enforcement officers are investigating to find out if it is wildlife meat or not.

This is the second case of wildlife crimes over the past weeks in Lam Dong Province. A rare Javan rhino was found dead in the central highlands of Vietnam on April 29 and it was very likely shot by poachers and further investigations is underway. On May 27, local people in the southern province of Dong Nai found a baby elephant weighing one ton dead in a mango garden. The three-year-old animal was found lying some 100 meters away from the forest of Vinh Cuu Nature and Heritage Reserve in Phu Ly Commune.

Related agencies have taken samples for investigations into the animal’s death. It was the seventh elephant to be found dead in Dong Nai province over the past year.

A recent survey of 2000 Ha Noi residents conducted by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network demonstrated that consumption of wild animal products is not only widely prevalent, but also generally accepted among a large portion of the population, despite past awareness-raising efforts and the enactment of legislation to protect particular threatened species.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff

Life floats by

Chai Village, a little fishing village hidden behind a mountain in the Tri Nguyen islands off Nha Trang, offers tourists an attractive seascape and tasty cuisine.
There are around 50 families in the village, most of which live in floating houses built on rafts. Others raise fish in cages under rafts on the sea but they live on the island.
They earn their living not only by selling seafood to traders but also by serving it to tourists.
Telling us about the history of the village, locals said Tri Nguyen was deserted not too long ago.
But fishermen from some central provinces like Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, and Binh Dinh arrived with their boats to avoid strong storms.
A tourist catches cuttlefish at the Chai floating fishing village near Nha Trang
These people then chose this site to reside, forming Chai Village.
From Cau Da Port, we hired a canoe to travel to Chai Village. The air was cool. The wind was light. Gliding on the sea water and gazing up at the nearby mountain made for a pleasant five-minute trip.
The village and its numerous fish farms and rafts appeared in front of us rather suddenly.
Han, our canoe driver, said tourists could stop at any raft they liked to catch fish. The owner would supply rods and bait and then make a meal from the tourists’ catches.
Sitting in one of the village’s floating houses to enjoy the seascape when the sun goes down and savoring steamed and grilled seafood is a memorable experience.
There are also some seafood restaurants in the village but many travelers prefer to challenge themselves by fishing for their meals. The restaurant staff does the cooking.
We stopped at Chai Village Restaurant. Its owner, Tam, eagerly welcomed us, and invited us to visit his farm.
The 150-meter raft was divided into many holding tanks, each of which was home to a different kind of creature.
We were amazed at a world of fish, cuttlefish, snails, and sea urchins. Some of them weighed about several kilograms.
It was not easy to catch them but it was exciting to watch them bite at our bait: small crabs.
After the fishing but before the meal, we explored island walking paths. Locals travel only by foot, as the paths are too small for motorbikes or bicycles.
Then we came back to the restaurant. The meal was more delicious with wine made from noni fruit. The bottles of noni wine have been soaked under the sea before being used to enhance the taste, Tam said.
After a meal, tourists can paddle around on the sea in a coracle. They may find it difficult to control the small round boat if they have never steered it before. It’s nearly impossible for a novice to keep it from spinning around.
In the shade of a sunset, Chai Village looks both seductive and shy with gentle waves lapping up against the bobbing boats and the laughter of fishermen ringing in the distance.
Reported by Phan Huy Tram

The poetry of a waterfall in the spring

From Duc Pho Town in the central province of Quang Ngai, we went west across seven kilometers of road through thick sugarcane fields.
We passed through a forest before the road let out into a poetic clearing of rocks and water. We had reached Da Giang Spring in Pho Nhon Commune.
We followed the spring that runs smoothly through rocks as the sound of crashing water grew louder and louder.
Then we hit the cascade, dozens of meters high. The waterfall created dazzling white spumes when it hit the spring.
It was easy to find large and flat rocks to use as small picnic tables. We were given shade by the leafy canopy of the old-growth forest.
My friend, who lives in the area, used a local trick to chill our beers: he placed them in a small hollowed out space in the rocks that filled with cool spring water. Ten minutes later, we were quenching our thirst with cold beer.
Orchids in yellow, purple, and pink jutted out from cliffs. Such a soft beauty in such a mighty forest!
Reported by Tran Cao Duyen