Like other Asian countries with long coastlines facing the Pacific Ocean, Vietnam is battered fairly regularly by typhoons almost year-round. That often means floods, landslides, and lost property and lives, but disaster survivors could count on many helping hands, aside from aid from the government.
That is, until lately.
Between September and December 2021, storms and heavy monsoon rains hit several parts of the country, especially central Vietnam, causing landslides and floods. While the local media still ran stories about the storms’ aftermath, there was barely any news about fundraising efforts by individuals or private groups for disaster survivors.
This may be because the country has been preoccupied with fighting the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has been infecting more and more Vietnamese in the past few months. Another reason could also be that with a decree affecting private aid initiatives taking effect this year, individuals have been more reluctant to raise funds and donate money for calamity victims. Charitable activities initiated by private individuals and groups seem to have also suddenly become scarce after a business tycoon said in several online videos that some celebrity philanthropists have been less than transparent on how they had disbursed donations meant for calamity victims.
Decree 93/2021/NĐ-CP, which came into effect on December 11, 2021, calls on philanthropists to be more professional and transparent about their aid activities. Interestingly, this was also the main point of the videos uploaded between March and May this year by Vietnamese-Canadian businesswoman Nguyễn Phương Hằng on her Facebook page. The videos specifically targeted many high-profile figures, including major celebrities who had run charitable initiatives to help people in central Vietnam, which was inundated by monsoon floods in late 2020.
The streets of tourist spot Hoi An were flooded in the wake of heavy monsoon rains in October 2021.
Shortly after Hằng’s May 25 live-streamed video, which attracted a record-breaking 300,000 viewers and was reposted by others, top comedian Hoài Linh made a public apology for the six-month delay in disbursing VND 14 billion (around US$615,000) that he had successfully raised for the people affected by the October 2020 floods. Also among those featured in Hằng’s series of exposés was Thuỷ Tiên, an award-winning singer who had won the public’s hearts and minds as well for raising VND 177 billion (around US$7.7 million) for the flood and landslide victims in central Vietnam.
State-approved kindness
Hằng’s motivations for her video exposés remain unclear; the accusations she made in the videos have also yet to be verified. But behind the “issues” she raised is this truth: Many Vietnamese today would rather put their trust on aid efforts initiated by individuals — especially celebrities — and private groups, than on those by state bodies.
Apparently, though, this has not sat well with state authorities. According to a Hanoi-based human-rights activist who declines to be named, charity and disaster relief are of prime importance, but the private sector taking the initiative is not always welcomed by the state. Put another way, such individual efforts to help disaster survivors are seen as implying that the state’s relief endeavors are insufficient. In Vietnam, the state must play a leading role in disaster relief.
But what has made matters worse for Thuỷ Tiên — and, as it turns out, Hoài Linh as well — is that she had refused to cooperate with the leaders of Vietnam Fatherland Front in Huế when she was there to distribute money and food to flood victims.
“Whether Thuỷ Tiên has committed any wrongdoing or not remains to be seen,” says the activist. “However, it is certain that she had ruffled the feathers of the government because she dared to outdo the top leaders in times of crisis.”
Last July, a famous football commentator had also raised funds, which he used to buy ventilators for Ho Chi Minh City public hospitals that had been overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients. But in a later Facebook post, the commentator said that his donation was turned down for not having secured permission first from local authorities. Such an initiative, according to the director of the Ho Chi Minh Department of Health, might cause “negative public opinion” of his agency.
“Kindness is not enough to do charity in Vietnam,” says the commentator. “Your kindness needs to be approved by the government.”
In fact, Vietnamese authorities had put this in writing years ago. Issued in 2008, Decree No. 64/2008/NĐ-CP on the mobilization, receipt, distribution, and use of sources of voluntary donations for people to overcome difficulties caused by natural disasters, fires, or serious incidents, and for terminally ill patients actually puts Thuỷ Tiên and other prominent individual fundraisers in legal limbo. According to the decree, only designated state organizations and units are permitted to receive and distribute relief money and goods in trying times. In other words, Thuỷ Tiên and other do-gooders should have gone through the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee or the Vietnam Red Cross Society to help calamity survivors.
Wariness over state corruption
The Vietnam Fatherland Front is an arm of the Vietnamese Communist Party. It is the state body that is supposed to take care of the needs of disaster survivors. The Vietnam Fatherland Front was established in 1955 and funded by the state, but there is no available information on just how much it receives from the government.
In any case, the problem is that many Vietnamese are distrustful of how state bodies and authorities handle public money. After all, systematic embezzlement of both internationally and domestically donated funds by state officials is not uncommon in Vietnam. Many people also see anti-corruption campaigns led by General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng as tokenistic and politically charged ploys that are insubstantial attempts to stem the widespread and multi-level graft in the country.
Participants in online debates have even attributed some of the natural calamities to environmental degradation indirectly brought about by the policies of corrupt officials.
As a result, even civil servants and Communist Party members have chosen to give to donation drives initiated by celebrities instead of those by the state. One secondary school teacher in Ho Chi Minh City, for example, says that while she was obliged to contribute to the charity fund at her school, most of the money she set aside for donations went to Thuỷ Tiên’s fund.
“They (the state) have never explained how they used the public funds,” explains the teacher. “Look at the current vaccine funds. They (the state) have never told us how they have been using it.”
A graduate student from Hà Tĩnh, one of the provinces hit hardest by disasters last year, also chose to donate to Thuỷ Tiên’s fund. Says the 25-year-old currently based in Sweden: “I had always wanted to donate my money to support flood-prone areas, but I had no idea how they would use the money. I do not trust the state funds, so I sent some money to her.”
A 60-year-old retiree in Huế says as well that she chose to send her donation to Thuỷ Tiên’s bank account instead of to the state fund. “At the most trying moments, I only saw the singer wading through knee-deep water to bring food and money to local people,” says the retiree. “I did not see any official doing that at all.”
According to a social worker at an international NGO, it helps that individual do-gooders like Thuỷ Tiên are able to bring aid fast and direct to those in need. This rarely happens with government initiatives, she says, because of red tape. “Disaster relief offered by local authorities is marginal compared to that by private groups,” she points out. “The bureaucracy is so cumbersome that by the time humanitarian support reaches the people, the disaster is long over.”
A local NGO worker from Huế echoes this, saying, “Thuỷ Tiên gave out cash and food without asking them (victims) to sign on papers every single item they received. Imagine that those having lost everything were required by state agencies to fill numerous forms before they could receive a bit of help.”
Still ‘no’ to state drives?
Since being accused by Hằng of underreporting and misusing crowdsourced calamity funds, though, the popular singer and her football-star husband have been on the defensive and have been posting bank statements on their Facebook page. Last September, they also did several livestreams, explaining how they used the donated money. In addition, they have issued a public statement saying that while they will still do charity work, they will no longer do crowdfunding. Undisbursed funds from previous drives have been transferred to the Vietnam Fatherland Front, the couple said. The police are now investigating their charity-related activities.
Some of those who had contributed to Thuỷ Tiên’s donation drive have also begun looking more closely at the singer’s charity work after Hằng’s exposés. But most indicate that they are unlikely to start diverting their donations to state funds and are willing to excuse the singer’s supposed shortcomings.
“In order to offer aid to local people, philanthropists have to make facilitation payments, which are not visible,” says the secondary school teacher from Ho Chi Minh City. “Of course, they might be a bit greedy to pocket some money, but their embezzlement is certainly less than those of the government, so for me, it is still okay.”
Vietnamese-Canadian businesswoman Nguyễn Phương Hằng went live on social media to question the disbursement of funds raised by local celebrities for flood victims and demand more transparency. The video was shared by her viewers nationwide. (Screenshot from YouTube page of Thanh Dung Gold)
Meanwhile, the social worker in Huế says that Tiên was able to do charity work because of her influence and connections with local authorities. “Her videos testified to her trips to many areas, but these are far from the hardest-hit ones,” says the social worker. “Yet at least she managed to do something that many NGOs were not able to do.”
One of the donors to Thuỷ Tiên’s charity funds, however, says that while she is still not going to give to state-initiated drives, she will start looking for more trustworthy individual do-gooders.
“I have followed her (Thuỷ Tiên) on Facebook and heard about her other previous charity initiatives,” says the citizen-donor who wants to be known only as Thanh. “I trusted her, so I donated. However, I soon realized that her decision was very intuitive and arbitrary — no criteria as to whom to give and what to give have been clarified.”
Thanh says that she will donate only a negligible sum to community leaders who visit door-to-door to collect money from residents, even as she plans to keep giving to charity drives initiated by individuals.
She adds, “I only donated to public funds because I was kinda forced to, not because I wanted to.” ●
Taman Verawati is a freelance writer based in Southeast Asia.
