Features | Environment | Southeast Asia

Taiwan and the Formosa Disaster in Vietnam: The Sound of Silence  

Ten years after a toxic waste dump poisoned Vietnam’s coast, the Taiwanese company responsible, both governments, and even the victims themselves have maintained a stunning silence.

On January 12, 2024, Nancy Bùi and dozens of colleagues from various civil society organizations demonstrated in front of the White House to demand justice for the victims of the 2016 ecological disaster caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, a subsidiary of the Taiwanese Formosa Plastic Group (FPG). The discharge of toxic waste affected 250 kilometers of the Vietnamese coastline, ruining the livelihoods of people in Hà Tĩnh, Nghệ An, Quảng Trị, and Quảng Bình provinces.

Alongside the star-spangled banner was a yellow banner with three horizontal red stripes, representing freedom, democracy, and cultural heritage. This flag was the national flag of the State of Vietnam (1949-1955), initially a state of the French Union led by Emperor Bảo Đại and later a fully independent state from France. Subsequently, it became the national flag of the now-defunct Republic of Vietnam (1955-1975). Although the South Vietnamese nation ceased to exist, the flag is still widely used in Vietnamese diaspora communities, many of whom fled the country during and after the fall of Saigon. 

The flag is now technically banned in the unified Vietnam under the Communist Party, and there have been instances of public figures facing heavy consequences for being associated with it, or just being seen near it. Yet at that January 2024 protests, the flag bearers represented 7,815 victims from various communities from the northern central part of Vietnam. These victims not only suffered from an unprecedented injustice caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel,  but were also suppressed by their own government in their efforts to defend their rights. Demonstrations demanding accountability for the spill are all but impossible inside Vietnam today. 

“Thousands of victims have still not been compensated, and the polluted areas remain inadequately restored,” said Bùi, co-founder Justice For Formosa Victims (JFFV), a U.S.-based non-profit that seeks compensation for the Vietnamese victims of the Formosa disaster. “Dozens of political prisoners remain behind bars simply for speaking up on behalf of voiceless victims. These fishermen did nothing wrong, and their supporters bravely raised their voices on their behalf. All deserve to return to their everyday lives. Victims need fair compensation so they can rebuild their lives and communities.”

Ten years have elapsed, marked by stunning silence from the company, concerned governments, and more paradoxically, the victims themselves. As Vietnamese victims face huge risks in seeking justice on their own, international actors have joined forces to right the wrong, though with limited success. 

Question marks still continue to swirl as to why justice has been delayed or outright denied to jobless, penniless, and voiceless victims. With Vietnam’s government showing its unwillingness to press the issue, activists at home and abroad are calling on the Taiwanese government to show its true commitment to democracy and the protection of human rights by holding Formosa Ha Tinh Steel and its parent company accountable.

The Communist Party Favors the Capitalist Actor 

Over the past decade, the JFFV has filed lawsuits against the company in Taiwan, lobbied in the United States, and filed a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Office on behalf of the Vietnamese victims. According to Bùi, the U.S. offer to assist in assessing the extent of the damage in Vietnam was turned down, though experts from Germany, Singapore, and Japan were invited. 

“From the outset, we understood that the victims themselves could not pursue justice within Vietnam due to the government’s brutal crackdown,” said Bùi. “The Vietnamese authorities sided with Formosa to secure the company’s role in boosting the regional economy, while at the same time covering up their own corruption.”

In May 2024,  the Working Group on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises, along with seven Special Rapporteurs on various aspects of human rights, sent allegation letters to Formosa Ha Tinh Steel and the Vietnamese government.

In response, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel described the 2016 disaster as “an isolated environmental accident.” In a letter of response dated September 2024, the company asserted its adherence to both Vietnamese laws and international standards in implementing various environmental protection, industrial safety, and occupational health and safety measures. Plus, it claimed to have fulfilled its duty toward the affected people by making a payment of $500 million to the government. 

“The Vietnamese government has used the funds to compensate the affected individuals for their personal and property losses and loss of work, and to implement various measures to restore livelihoods, safeguard their health, and rehabilitate marine ecology, which was reported by the Vietnamese media at that time,” Formosa Ha Tinh Steel insisted in the letter.

“The impact of the April 2016 event on the locals was brought under control in the shortest time possible, and a nearly full recovery was achieved in May 2018,” the company added.

Its reply matches with the messaging in Vietnamese domestic media. The Vietnamese government had full power to officially decide who are the victims, who would be compensated, and whether justice has been done to both the people and the environment. Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, by its own admission, compensated the Vietnamese government rather than paying damages to the people directly impacted by its disaster. 

Unfortunately, contrary to what the government concluded, justice is still denied to many victims – people from the most climate-vulnerable and economically disadvantaged regions of Vietnam. The Vietnamese government mainly gave compensation to those who live in Ha Tinh. 

Formosa Plastics Group, one of Taiwan’s largest private industrial conglomerates, did not provide any reply to the U.N. Working Group’s May 2024 letter. The government of Vietnam requested a one-month extension to respond, but has not said anything since.

Formosa Plastics Group and Formosa Ha Tinh Steel did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Expecting the Vietnamese government to retract its statements and revisit the case in a rights-based manner is likely wishful thinking. Consider an example from Vietnam’s history. After the Maoist land reform was introduced in Vietnam in the 1950s on the advice of Chinese advisers, landlords were killed and their families persecuted. Eventually, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) acknowledged that it had made a mistake, but it deterred others from mulling over it. Justice, in the eyes of the party, had been done simply by providing rhetorical acknowledgement. After that, the CPV was more interested in halting public discussion rather than restoring justice. 

The U.N. faces its own challenges in amplifying the incident. Given that Taiwan has no seat at the United Nations due to the one China policy, the U.N. Working Group has no way to directly involve Taiwan in this matter. Instead, the Working Group sent its letter regarding Formosa Ha Tinh Steel to the government of the People’s Republic of China. 

“The letter regards China as the ‘home state’ of Formosa Plastics Group,” explained Pasha L. Hsieh, a professor of law at Singapore Management University. “The problem is that China has no de facto jurisdiction over Taiwan or corporations based in........

© The Diplomat