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DE RUEHHM #0663/01 3270913
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 230913Z NOV 09
FM AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 6136
INFO RUEHHI/AMEMBASSY HANOI 4033
RUCNARF/ASEAN REGIONAL FORUM COLLECTIVE
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 0020
RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON 0004
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 0041
RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL 0033
RUEHHM/AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY 6379

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 HO CHI MINH CITY 000663 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/MLS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  11/23/2019 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM VM XB
SUBJECT: INTERNATIONAL LEGAL CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS SPEED BUMPS ON 
ROAD TO VIETNAM'S INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000663  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Kenneth J. Fairfax, Consul General, U.S. 
Consulate General Ho Chi Minh City, Department of State. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Holding the 2009 LawAsia Society conference, the 
LawAsia Moot Competition for law students and the meeting of 
Asian/Pacific Chief Justices concurrently in HCMC represented 
both a significant step forward for Vietnam's legal profession 
as well as a reminder of how far they still have to go.  While 
organizers initially took minor setbacks (such as a GVN demands 
that speeches be modified and that one paper slated for 
presentation to the LawAsia Society conference be dropped 
entirely) in stride, by the closing of the event international 
organizers and local sponsored were clearly under extreme 
stress.  Closing remarks at the award ceremony for the Moot 
Competition were rewritten entirely just hours before the event 
in a last-ditch effort to assuage irate CPV and MPS officials 
who had taken exception to various aspects of the event. 
Despite these drawbacks, Vietnamese lawyers and students 
participating in the events were clearly elated at having the 
opportunity to interact with international colleagues.  Foreign 
participants, including the Chief Justice of Australia's Supreme 
Court, were very impressed with the quality of young Vietnamese 
lawyers and students. END SUMMARY. 
 
 
 
LAWASIA COMES TO HCMC 
 
--------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) After more than four years of attempts and preparation, 
LawAsia (the law association for Asia and the Pacific) held its 
2009 annual conference in HCMC.  Concurrent with the conference, 
the association of Chief Justices of Asian and Pacific Supreme 
Courts held their annual meeting in the city and LawAsia held 
the finals of its annual Moot Competition for law students. 
LawAsia President Glenn Ferguson (from Australia) oversaw the 
conference while Raphael Tay (from Malaysia) served as the Chair 
of the LawAsia Moot Competition organizing committee. Other 
LawAsia officers from Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, New 
Zealand and elsewhere also participated in the organizing.  The 
meeting of Chief Justices of Supreme Courts was the most private 
of the three events and was organized by staff working for the 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Malaysia.  Their 
counterparts were the Vietnam National University - HCMC School 
of Law (VNU-HCMC School of Law) for the Moot Competition, the 
Ministry of Justice and HCMC Bar Association for the LawAsia 
Conference, and the Ministry of Justice for the meeting of Chief 
Justices. 
 
 
 
¶3. (C) As the leadership of LawAsia and the organizers of the 
Moot Competition explained at lunch with ConGen Officers just 
after their arrival in HCMC, bringing the three annual Asian law 
events to HCMC had been a long-held dream of LawAsia's leaders 
that they pursued as part of their commitment to promoting rule 
of law and the professionalization of both lawyers and judges 
throughout Asia.  The participation of a member of Vietnam's 
high court in a previous meeting, along with the very good 
showing made by Vietnamese students in past Moot Competitions, 
appeared to help the GVN accept the event. 
 
 
 
¶4. (C) Organizers began to get a taste of complications to come 
before the conference and competition began.  The Moot 
Competition organizers, for example, had made requests to 
several Consulates General whose countries had teams 
participating in the Moot Competition to co-host an informal 
evening event for the students, judges and lawyers.  After the 
USA, Australia and Singapore had agreed, however, Vietnamese 
counterparts informed LawAsia that it would be "too sensitive" 
for the foreign consulates to host events.  On the day the 
LawAsia board arrived, they were greeted with the news from the 
Ministry of Justice that one of the keynote papers to be 
presented at the conference had to be dropped entirely.  The 
paper, by a LawAsia Board Member from Australia, had been on 
balancing states' interests and personal privacy in the Internet 
age and had advocated adoption by Asian nations of a document 
similar to the European Charter on Internet Privacy.  In 
addition, LawAsia's Executive Secretary had been "invited" to 
discuss changes to his opening address to students participating 
in the Moot Competition. Despite these minor glitches, however, 
the LawAsia board was clearly upbeat during their first day in 
HCMC and focused much of their discussion on the opportunity the 
upcoming events represented to help integrate Vietnam's legal 
profession into the international community. 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000663  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
 
 
 
¶5. (C) The spirits of the LawAsia group were further bolstered 
when one of the leaders of HCMC Bar told them that they should 
not worry too much about the Internet privacy paper being pulled 
since he would call on the author during a discussion session 
with a question that would, in effect, invite the author to 
present his arguments from the floor. In a discussion with CG 
after the conference, both the presenter and the Vietnamese 
lawyer said that the exchange had gone very well.  One of the 
Vice Presidents of the HCMC Bar Association commented, however, 
that MoJ officials were very unhappy with the topics raised 
during open discussions at the LawAsia event but shrugged off 
the reprimand he had received as nothing unusual.  While he 
expressed doubts that MoJ will agree to let LawAsia return to 
Vietnam anytime soon, he added that it won't be Vietnam's turn 
again for a number of years -- and who knows what could happen 
by then. 
 
 
 
Moot Not Mute 
 
------------- 
 
¶6. (C) The Moot Competition wound up being the lighting rod that 
attracted the most strikes.  At first glance, the topic of the 
2009 Moot Competition appears technical and arcane: a 
multi-party dispute involving a treasure-hunting ocean salvage 
company, a fictitious nation where a colonial-era ship wreck had 
been found, the fictitious nation from which the gold and other 
valuable artifacts had been looted over a century ago, and the 
fictitious country whose flag the wrecked ship flew.  In 
practice, however, arguments presented and subsequent 
questioning by judges frequently focused on fundamental 
principles of law such as the right of the state versus the 
rights of property owners, the sanctity of contracts and even 
the proper separation of judiciary from the executive branch. 
While LawAsia representatives had submitted all papers to be 
presented at their conference to the Ministry of Justice in 
advance, they had not submitted all of the student's initial 
written arguments in the moot competition.  As Moot Chair 
Raphael Tay explained to CG, they were only student papers and 
touched only upon a fictitious case so he never even thought to 
present them for censorship review. 
 
 
 
¶7. (C) As the competition moved from initial arguments to 
questions and answers, the discussion became even more 
sensitive.  The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Malaysia, 
who had volunteered as one of the Moot Competition judges, 
undoubtedly set off mental alarm bells when he asked the 
students representing VNU-HCMC Law School what their arguments 
in the case implied about the limits of states' power in private 
property cases and the responsibility of states' to respect 
their own laws and contracts.  Other Moot Competition judges 
asked questions that directly linked the fictitious case to the 
independence of the judiciary, the value and legal weight of 
precedence, and other topics.  The result was an avalanche of 
protests directed at the organizers and hosts of the Moot 
competition.  After being contacted by MoJ officials, VNU-HCMC 
Law School Rector Mai Hong Quy lodged a complaint with LawAsia 
ExecSec Tay, demanding to know why students' written arguments 
had not been submitted in advance.  As the competition continued 
and the judges began their questioning, her complaints were 
joined by additional ones directly from the Ministry of Justice, 
the HCMC Communist Party and the Ministry of Public Security 
(MPS).  A few sessions of the competition were delayed by 
frantic demands that contestants and judges stick narrowly to 
the topic but eventually proceeded.  The presence of two Chief 
Justices (Malaysia and Australia) plus numerous other senior 
judicial officials at the competition probably helped avert more 
disruptions. 
 
 
 
¶8. (C) Moot Competition Chair Raphael Tay told CG that as the 
competition continued and complaints mounted, he had found 
VNU-HCMC Rector Mai Hong Quy literally in tears due to the 
direct threats she had received from the CPV and MPS, both of 
whom had informed her that the poor judgment she displayed in 
hosting the Moot Competition raised serious doubts about her 
suitability as law school rector. Tay was approached by multiple 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000663  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
officials who demanded that he intervene with Moot Competition 
judges in order to convince them to stick narrowly to the topic 
and avoid sensitive lines of questioning. 
 
 
 
A SURREAL CLOSURE -- BUT LOTS OF SMILES 
 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) The Moot Competition award ceremony, which was broadcast 
live on Vietnamese national television, reflected both the 
strains the competition had caused as well as the friendships it 
had helped form.  Rector Mai Hong Quy's opening speech, which 
she confided to CG she had finished rewriting only shortly 
before the broadcast began, hailed the Moot Competition as "an 
opportunity for Vietnam to demonstrate to the international 
community the value of Ho Chi Minh thought as applied to 
education, particularly Ho Chi Minh's emphasis on education 
through practice focused on achieving national goals."  The rest 
of the speech continued along the same lines and generally 
sounded more like a pronouncement from the CPV's ideology 
department than from a well respected lawyer and academic. 
(Comment: Mai Hong Quy is a long-time Consulate contact. Her 
stated personal goal is to improve the quality of legal 
education in Vietnam. In order to pursue this goal effectively, 
she avoids unnecessary controversy while pursuing a pragmatic, 
gradual program of expanding legal education into such areas as 
international law and even human rights law.  Her speech that 
night was unlike anything we had heard from her before. End 
Comment.) 
 
 
 
¶10. (C) After having already rewritten his closing speech once 
to avoid references to advancing the rule of law and other 
"sensitive topics," Raphael Tay was also forced to completely 
rewrite his remarks at the last minute. His final speech was an 
extended (nationally televised) apology for the many problems 
the Moot Competition had encountered.  He took all of the blame 
on himself, stating that Mai Hong Quy and others had done 
everything correctly and had even attempted to help him avoid 
his many errors.  He added that if he could, he would do 
anything if only to take back the tears that had been shed. 
 
 
 
¶11. (SBU) Against that somber background, the actual awards 
ceremony was huge success.  The VNU-HCMC Law School team won one 
of the major awards of the night and was given a second, special 
award for the team that had overcome the greatest obstacles in 
order to successfully compete in the Moot. While the VNU-Hanoi 
Law School team did not win any awards, the students were still 
clearly ecstatic to be taking part in an international 
competition.  Even the legion of law and English students from 
HCMC who served as volunteers during the competition were giddy 
with the excitement of making so many new friends from across 
Asia and the Pacific. (FYI: The top team award went to a 
Malaysian team and the top individual award to an Aussie. The 
sole American team, from LA, did not garner any awards.) 
 
 
 
¶12. (C) In conversations with international students and coaches 
after the competition, it appeared that the behind-the-scenes 
drama had made little impression on them. Delays are normal and 
can occur for many reasons, so the ones caused by concern over 
presentations and questions did not appear to strike most 
participants as anything unusual. With only a few exceptions, 
the students appeared unaware of -- and unconcerned with -- the 
reasons for the delays. International professors and coaches 
were uniformly complementary of the level of preparation and 
poise of the Vietnamese law students; several expressed surprise 
that students of such caliber were students at essentially 
unknown law schools.  While various participants admitted that 
they were rather surprised that the award ceremony for an 
academic legal competition included no less than three 
elaborately choreographed dance routines and two fashion shows, 
no one CG spoke with complained about the addition of a bit of 
Las Vegas style glitz to what is usually a rather sedate legal 
awards event. 
 
 
 
CHIEF JUSTICES MEETING PUBLICIZED BUT PRIVATE 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000663  004.2 OF 004 
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶13. (C) Of the three legal events that took place simultaneously 
in HCMC, the meeting of Chief Justices of Asian and Pacific 
Supreme Courts was the highest level and least public.  Justices 
from roughly a dozen countries met in the Reunification Palace 
(former Presidential Palace) in HCMC.  Despite huge banners 
welcoming them and a brief televised segment of Vietnamese 
leaders greeting the justices, the entire meeting took place in 
complete privacy.  Even lunches and dinners were closed. The few 
justices who did venture out to volunteer as judges in the Moot 
Competition would only say that meeting was open and productive 
with no topics off limits but that it was also completely 
private. 
 
 
 
COMMENT 
 
------- 
 
¶14. (C) Despite the drama that surrounded the LawAsia Conference 
and the Moot Competition, having those two events take place in 
Vietnam for the first time represents a concrete step forward in 
the slow process of improving rule of law in Vietnam as well as 
moving the country toward accepting international legal norms. 
The drama is simply a reflection of the fact that the step 
forward was rather larger than the CPV and MPS are comfortable 
with.  Despite the angst of their government, Vietnamese lawyers 
and law students were very proud to serve as hosts and worked 
hard to earn the respect of their international colleagues. 
While CPV sensitivities may preclude a repetition of an event of 
this type for some time to come, the fact remains that many 
Vietnamese lawyers and students who have never had the 
opportunity to travel or study abroad have now had a strong 
taste of how law is practiced outside of Vietnam -- and they 
clearly like what they tasted. 
 
 
 
¶15. (U) This cable was coordinated with Embassy Hanoi. 
FAIRFAX