This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 HANOI 003288 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED 
 
STATE FOR G/TIP, INL/AAE, EAP/BCLTV, EAP/RSP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SNAR KWMN KCRM VM CH TW CA OMIG TIP CNARC
SUBJECT:  VIETNAM MINISTRY OF PUBLIC SECURITY ON TRAFFICKING 
IN PERSONS AND NARCOTICS 
 
REF:  HANOI 2323 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary: Senior members of the General Criminal 
Division of the Ministry of Public Security described their 
frustration with current laws preventing them from engaging 
in closer cooperation with U.S. and other foreign law 
enforcement agencies, and described the trafficking in 
persons situation and GVN efforts to address the problem. 
End summary. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Poloff met December 17 with Director General of the 
Criminal Police Department Pham Xuan Quac, Deputy Director 
General of the Counternarcotics Department Nguyen Chi Le, 
and Do Dinh Khiem, an officer in the counternarcotics 
Department.  Quac opened the meeting with general 
observations about the importance of international 
cooperation on law enforcement issues, especially TIP and 
Counternarcotics.  He said that MPS "routinely" cooperates 
with the U.S. in criminal cases, especially in cases where 
U.S. criminals have fled to Vietnam.  The GVN, he said, has 
made some arrests in the past of Vietnamese Americans based 
on an exchange of information with the USG.  These criminals 
usually have connections to the south, and hide there, so 
MPS headquarters cooperates closely with Ho Chi Minh City in 
such cases, he added.  Quac noted that this represented the 
first meeting between the U.S. Embassy and MPS to discuss 
the issue of trafficking in persons, and welcomed the 
development. 
 
MPS' characterization of the TIP problem in Vietnam 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
 
¶3. (SBU) Quac reviewed the TIP situation in Vietnam and 
described the problem as "complicated and sophisticated, 
having a bad impact on the situation of the region and the 
nation."  Quac said that TIP, once confined to internal 
migration of rural women to urban areas, was now related to 
international criminal syndicates, and was no longer 
contained within Vietnam's borders.  In particular, the TIP 
business in Vietnam was connected (in order of significance) 
to Cambodia, China, Taiwan, Macao, Hong Kong, Thailand, and 
Malaysia.  Laos, despite its border with Vietnam, did not 
figure in Vietnamese TIP.  On the list of countries involved 
in TIP in Vietnam, Quac said MPS believed that China and 
Cambodia accounted for most cases because of their 
proximity.  Quoc also noted that there is a growing problem 
of trafficking in children in Vietnam through adoption 
agencies fraudulently arranging adoptions with European 
countries. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Most of the women trafficked to Cambodia are sold 
to brothels or forced to work as prostitutes, Quac said.  In 
China, he added, women are forced to become wives in 
situations they do not want.  The number of women forced 
into prostitution in China is lower than in Cambodia, Quac 
added.  Taiwan is a special case, he said.  In some cases, 
Taiwanese men marry Vietnamese women in Vietnam and then 
sell them to brothels in Taiwan. 
 
Trafficking methods 
------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Addressing the practicalities of trafficking, Quac 
noted that Vietnam had over 5,000 KM of land borders with 
other countries, and had many official border crossings as 
well as countless "forest paths" where people crossed the 
border unofficially.  The traffickers use legal methods of 
travel -- especially tourism and labor export mechanisms -- 
to disguise trafficking, he noted.  Traffickers in Vietnam 
profit from the gap between rich and poor and the 
differences in development between regions of Vietnam, as 
well as Vietnam's "increased integration into the 
international system", Quac said. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Quac said traffickers take advantage of Vietnamese 
women's desire to travel, to improve their lives, and to 
help their families.  The women they target are generally 
uneducated, naive, poor women from mountainous and rural 
areas.  Urban women are savvier and harder to cheat, Quac 
observed.  However, awareness activities and the 
dissemination of laws and regulations are weaker in far-off 
areas, and that makes women there vulnerable.  Some, he 
noted, worked as prostitutes in Vietnam and went willingly 
to China, Cambodia and elsewhere to be prostitutes there. 
Most women, however, had no idea before they went that they 
would end up as an exploited wife or prostitute. 
 
Failings in the Vietnamese legal system 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) Quac admitted that the Vietnamese legal system is 
"still under construction."  He noted that coordination 
between ministries, and between the central government and 
the provinces, has always been tough.  Difficulties in 
investigation, prosecution, and conviction stemmed from this 
problem.  As an example, he noted that some criminals -- 
traffickers -- escaped from Vietnam while under 
investigation, and some cases had to be dropped because the 
suspect fled the country.  State regulations and management 
over labor export and marriage, he said, was "plagued with 
loopholes" providing "semi-legal" reasons and mechanisms for 
trafficking-related travel. 
 
Policy-level anti-trafficking steps in the GVN 
--------------------------------------------- - 
 
¶8. (SBU) On the positive side, Quac noted that the GVN had 
instructed various ministries to take action against 
trafficking criminals.  The most recent criminal code (in 
1999) contained regulations on punishment of trafficking 
crimes, with the highest penalty being 20 years in prison 
and a VND 50 million fine.  The penalties for trafficking in 
children were even more severe, with life imprisonment 
possible for traffickers.  Directive 766, issued in 1997, 
assigned responsibility and oversight over trafficking to 
various agencies in the GVN.  In September 2003 the Office 
of the Prime Minister convened a ministerial conference to 
review the progress of Directive 766, and at that 
conference, the PM's office declared that Vietnam needed a 
national-level program to combat trafficking (reftel).  The 
PM assigned the Ministry of Public Security to chair a 
committee to help the government supervise this task.  MPS 
assigned tasks to various groups from various agencies to 
work on the national-level program, and the collected the 
drafts for transmission to the PM for approval.  The result 
of the PM's decision is still pending, Quoc noted, but in 
the meantime, the GVN had asked all agencies and localities 
to support anti-trafficking activities, particularly by 
working to reduce poverty and alleviate hunger and offering 
victim assistance to returnees, and by strengthening the 
patrols of the Cambodian and Chinese borders. 
 
Concrete steps 
-------------- 
 
¶9. (SBU) Quac informed poloff that the Department of Police 
had established a team of 10 officers headed by a three-star 
colonel to focus on "social evils", including trafficking. 
The officers were specially chosen, and all had university 
degrees.  The GDP had already requested that MPS upgrade the 
team to the level of a Department, with 20 officers. Quac 
said.  The team's primary responsibility was to coordinate 
with MOLISA, the Women's Union, the Committee on Population, 
Families, and Children, and the other agencies with equities 
in the Trafficking issue, and to detect criminals.  The team 
would also participate in planned visits to China and 
Cambodia to discuss trafficking and other transnational 
crimes.  The Cambodia visit would occur after Tet and focus 
on trafficking in persons, narcotics, and the bilateral MOU 
on law enforcement.  The delegation would be headed by a 
Vice Minister from MPS, he added. 
 
¶10. (SBU) The number one role of MPS, Quac said, was to 
investigate cases, arrest suspects, and coordinate the 
trial.  Other agencies and other ministries have their own 
responsibilities vis-a-vis trafficking, he said, and denied 
that MPS would "lead" those agencies.  MPS does not have 
tasking authority over other ministries, he explained. 
Noting, however, that the Deputy Prime Minister (Nguyen Tan 
Dung) had suggested an office or department be created to 
"lead the effort" against trafficking in persons, he 
speculated that the new MPS office might be elevated to the 
role of advising the Office of the Government on trafficking 
matters, which would give it de facto tasking authority over 
other offices and agencies, even ministries.  The legal 
tasking authority, however, would remain the Office of the 
Government. 
 
MPS would like more international cooperation, not less 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
 
¶11. (SBU) Quac noted that a high priority of the GVN was to 
"complete our legal system to let us cooperate with each 
other and foreigners."  (Note: this was a reference to the 
difficulty MPS has in engaging in operational cooperation 
with foreign law enforcement agencies such as DEA due to 
restrictive regulations and laws.  End note.)  He added that 
MPS had recently established a team for working on this 
issue.  It was important to figure out a way to coordinate 
the role of police from countries in the region, he said. 
He hoped the U.S. and Vietnam would be able to take 
advantage of the CNA by designing more cooperation and more 
activities. 
 
Finally, he noted that statistics on trafficking cases for 
2003 were unavailable.  He provided the following numbers 
(unavailable in disaggregated form) for the period 1991- 
2002: 
 
CASES           2,269 
SUSPECTS        3,787 
PROSECUTIONS    1,818 
OFFENDERS TRIED 3,118 
 
Quac concluded that in 2003, MPS had worked even harder, so 
the numbers would ultimately show an improvement. 
 
Le on Counternarcotics 
---------------------- 
 
¶12. (SBU) DDG Le noted and thanked DEA for assisting MPS so 
far in its counternarcotics efforts.  He gave a general 
rundown of information on narcotics trafficking in Vietnam, 
most of which is reported septel in the 2003 International 
Narcotics Control Strategy Report.  He did note, however, 
that the entire poppy production in Vietnam could be 
consumed locally within 7-10 days by Vietnam's addict 
population.  Vietnam, he said, is not producing for export. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Le admitted frankly that Vietnam had trouble 
controlling its borders, noting also that the General 
Department of Police has only token representation in border 
areas, which are the responsibility of the Army and the 
Border Guards. 
 
¶14. (SBU) Le said he had heard that the U.S. and Vietnam had 
signed the Counternarcotics LOA, but had seen no official 
notification of it in the Vietnamese press or through 
official channels.  With the agreement, he hoped that the 
U.S. and Vietnam could coordinate more.  He said his hope 
was that the Agreement would "create the conditions for the 
U.S. and Vietnam to realize our wishes."  MPS, he said, had 
a lot of wishes. 
 
MPS hands are tied on cooperation, controlled delivery 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶15. (SBU) Le spoke heatedly and emotionally about the lack 
of permission for MPS to do controlled deliveries of 
narcotics.  He said that the 2001 drug law mentions 
controlled deliveries, but added that a "sub-law" is needed 
to regulate justice agencies' use of the technique.  Without 
the sub-law, he said, he would be breaking the law if he 
participated in a controlled delivery operation -- and would 
be arrested.  As far as MPS and the Counternarcotics 
Department was concerned, regulations permitting controlled 
deliveries were badly needed and long overdue.  It was, 
unfortunately, up to the People's Procuracy and the Court to 
agree before MPS could start using this tactic. 
 
¶16. (SBU) Asked about real operational coordination with 
DEA, Le noted again that existing Vietnamese law blocked him 
from operational cooperation with foreign law enforcement in 
Vietnam and said that until the legal issues were resolved, 
it was not going to happen. 
 
Praise for ILEA 
--------------- 
 
¶17. (SBU) Le was very complimentary of ILEA and said that 
his department greatly valued the training they received 
there.  He hoped that the CNA would not mean an end to 
Vietnamese participation in ILEA.  He suggested that MPS 
would be interested in holding a conference or workshop for 
law enforcement in cooperation with DEA or the Embassy as a 
possible application of the CNA, and said that MPS was open 
to suggestions of a subject for such a conference. 
 
¶18. (SBU) Comment: Most of Quan and Le's points in the 
meeting were read from a prepared text that had been cleared 
ahead of time.  The spontaneous sections of the meetings 
occurred in the discussion of obstacles to international 
cooperation and to the use of controlled deliveries.  End 
comment. 
BURGHARDT