The stink from Vietnam’s fish kill scandal which left some 70 tons of dead fish scattered across the beaches of four of the country’s provinces and fishermen out of work is symptomatic of something greater than worries about food security and the environment: access to information and the ability to distribute it.
On June 30, almost three months since the mass fish deaths began, Vietnam’s newspapers all began printing the same story: Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp., a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group, blamed by many for the incident, had accepted responsibility for the industrial pollution that had caused the environmental fiasco and would pay $500 million in compensation. The government of Vietnam, which had been silent for much of this, also noted the company was responsible due to a toxic spill. Earlier in the month there was progress towards a verdict but no confirmation, as Tuoi Tre newspaper wrote:
On June 2, the government held a press meeting to announce that the cause behind the deaths had been identified, but it was being challenged by experts in order to ensure it was based on scientific, legal, and objective grounds before a final conclusion was confirmed.
While the public waited for answers and the tourism industry suffered, the press was also curtailed. As the New York Times mentioned in its reporting of the incident: Officials said that it had been necessary to restrict news coverage of the disaster while the investigation was underway. This wasn’t entirely unusual for the country whose journalists often face obstacles while doing their jobs, but it did highlight a situation that doesn’t appear to be getting better anytime soon. Vietnam has consistently been ranked poorly for press freedom, and the fish death debacle shows recent changes in the Vietnamese press: environmental journalism is now more tightly watched as the public becomes more aware of problems and more likely to organize. In the wake of this scandal, the freedom to report thoroughly on environmental issues might be abating, just as it gains traction in the public commons in Vietnam.
In fact the reaction Thursday to the scandal served as a coup, of sorts, and a rarity in governmental response to similar offenses in the past. Going forward, the level of follow up reporting will determine more about how much press freedom will be allowed in these large-scale environmental cases with their mix of government oversight, foreign money and public anger at pollution. But for right now this new government line, and fine of half a billion in compensation, is encouraging in comparison to the wrist-slap fines of the past.
Up to now environmental and food safety issues have been allowable investigative stalwarts of the press for a while, likely because they’re much safer topics than tales of actual, detailed official corruption or government mismanagement. But once somewhat controversial issues get enough public attention, coverage often lessens or is at least more carefully managed. Such was the case with our fish kill story, which made international headlines as well as people took to the streets in protest for the lack of accountability and information for this disaster.
But this is nothing new. In fact, those critical of the government can be locked up under three different sections of the criminal code: 88, 79 and 258. Vietnam’s press is state-owned, but each news outlet is owned by different government organizations, rather than by the Communist Party directly. Instead, directives are issued and there is also a good measure of self-censorship; editors and journalists tend to know when a story or topic is incendiary. This 2008 paper, written as social media was just taking off, covers how Vietnam’s press operates quite well.
When Vietnam’s fish kill protests began over two months ago, people were angry at the lack of government action, the cavalier response from a spokesman for Taiwanese company Formosa assumed responsible for the pollution and worried for both food security and the livelihoods of those affected. By early May, protesters in Ho Chi Minh City numbered in the many hundreds or more, and were not simply activists but ordinary people, too.
Before the news of the chemical spill and the fine broke this week, Formosa built a 10.6 billion dollar steel mill in Ha Tinh, a small, poor province south of Hanoi where a large amount of the fish washed up. The building of the plant was a coup for the provincial government that had lobbied hard.
Back then it was said that the piles of fish washed ashore were apparently the result of a one-time accidental dump of pollution in the sea via an underwater pipeline several miles offshore, according to initial press reports. Formosa spokesman’s initial statement at a press conference stating that Vietnam would have to choose between a steel plant and catching fish and seafood set off a social media storm of people choosing fish.
Throughout the ordeal, the government blocked much reporting on the issue, citing its sensitive nature and so people turned to other avenues to express their frustration and share information. As Vietnam Right Now wrote on June 11, With demonstrations banned, and the media firmly under state control, frustration at the government’s handling of the mass fish deaths in central provinces has increasingly been restricted to social media.
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