THE LIBERTARIAN VIEW

 

What Deeper Lessons Can We Learn From Southwest Airlines’ Meltdown? – OpEd

 January 5, 2023  Eurasia Review  

By AIER

By Craig J. Richardson*

During the last week of December 2022, amid one of our nation’s worst snowstorms, Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights and sowed chaos and confusion among not only travelers but the flight crews themselves. The question as to why Southwest did so much more poorly than other airlines has been the subject of dozens of articles featuring interviews with transportation experts. On December 27th alone, Southwest was responsible for 87 percent of all flight cancellations in the country, even as the other airlines quickly recovered. 

The majority of experts have centered on two reasons for the failure after the fact. First, the airline operates on a point-to-point system with some incidental connectivity through main cities, rather than a hub-and-spoke system that involves banks of airplanes all arriving and leaving a hub city within a designated time frame to enable transfers. Second, it is using antiquated software that works just fine for the vast majority of events but could not handle an extreme weather event. The combination of these two factors created a cascading failure, since a canceled flight on one leg of a flight left a crew stranded in a city, unable to complete the next series of point-to-point flights. The aging software was so overwhelmed that the airline did not even know the locations of its flight crews. 

But the experts usually forget to mention something. Prior to the enormous storm, Southwest was known for its high efficiency and customer service. Two weeks before Southwest Airlines’ disastrous meltdown, its CEO praised his team as the best, “not just in the airline industry, but on the entire planet.” Note it takes a crisis to create instant experts who point out the “obvious” problems with an organization after the fact, but not before. 

Indeed, a point-to-point system, when it is working well, is more efficient than a hub-and-spoke system in terms of getting people from point A to point B. This means that planes can fly directly to their destinations, which passengers favor, rather than having to fly to a busy hub city such as Atlanta, and then connecting on another flight. All of us who fly regularly have endured the stress of making a tight connection. 

Not only is a point-to-point system favored by consumers, but average flight times are shorter, which saves fuel. Fewer planes are needed for a given route, as well as fewer flight crews, contributing to some of the lowest per-unit costs in the industry. Southwest’s decades-old but serviceable reservation system, at least until lately, has been just good enough the overwhelming majority of the time. Both of these factors have enabled Southwest to offer discounted fares as well as garner praise as one of travel customers’ favorite airlines. 

So the question is this: why haven’t more airlines adopted Southwest’s model? After all, our economic theory teaches us that in competitive markets, firms seek out the most efficient means of production in order to increase profits. Those that do not will eventually go under. 

The answer is not discussed in economic textbooks. Preparing for unexpected events is very difficult to build into a typical model of profit and loss. This is because it involves an unknowable tradeoff that each company must make between efficiency and resiliency. One cannot have more of both. Moreover, how the company thinks about time itself is part of this preparation. A company focused on the next quarter’s profits will think very differently than one that has a 25-year business plan.

Resiliency is the idea that a firm has something in its hip pocket that enables it to weather not just predictable challenging events, but also what are known as Black Swan events. A Black Swan event is a huge surprise, seemingly out of left field, does not follow probability theory and thus falls outside the normal business model or plan. Black Swan theory was first developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his eponymous book. He notes that the possibility of a Black Swan event is often ignored by industry leaders, even though if and when it does happen, it causes a huge upheaval for the organization. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously put it, there are “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns.” A Black Swan event is an unknown unknown. 

It’s hard for a CEO to make a case for protecting against Black Swan events to shareholders and management if that event has never occurred, since spending money on protection against a potential Black Swan event means diminished profits on an ongoing basis. Leaders of these organizations only get to say, “I told you so” when the unlikely event happens. If it never does, they may only be blamed for lower profits and may never get credit for their foresightedness. This is different from purchasing an insurance policy for smaller scale losses with a known probability of occurrence. 

This brings us to the current structure of the airline industry. The vast majority of airlines use the hub-and-spoke system, which is more resilient to these types of unexpected Black Swan disruptions. When one flight was canceled out of Atlanta, a major flight hub, the other airlines had multiple options to reroute passengers, and flight crews were more likely to be available rather than stranded in a remote city. The other airlines also had invested in more modern software that allowed them to adapt to extreme weather conditions. 

As a result, Southwest’s bet on extreme efficiency on a daily basis made it ill-prepared for an unknown unknown. Perhaps the bias came from the short-term thinking of former CEO Gary Kelly, who came from the accounting world and has been described as a “number cruncher”.

In their 2014 book, Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives, economist Sendhil Mullainathn and psychologist Eldar Shafir discuss ways that organizations can build resiliency by taking actions that at first glance may seem counter to profits. Their word for resiliency is “slack” and by that they mean deliberately building in inefficiency in order to handle unexpected events. 

For example, an “efficient” and highly profitable hospital network may suffer a similar meltdown in operations under a bizarre mass casualty event, if it doesn’t have extra staff or space that appears unproductive on a balance sheet. Likewise, a domestic car company that does all its business with just one foreign steel company, in order to get the best negotiated prices, may be vulnerable to an unexpected political coup. What looks like inefficient slack or resiliency may in fact be an efficient long-term choice, if and when the Black Swan event occurs. 

In an interconnected economy, we are in the dark when it comes to Black Swan events, so the best we can do is make an educated guess. If a firm had good information about these tradeoffs, it could swap units of efficiency for units of resiliency until the long-run return for each was the same at the margin, i.e. the last dollar spent for each. But in the real world, the firm can only get concrete information on efficiency. 

Not surprisingly, in a market, there tends to be a bias towards what is measurable. In the Southwest Airlines’ case, it now appears they pursued an excess of transportation efficiency, which has measurable present benefits, instead of adding more resiliency, which has unmeasurable future benefits. 

The lesson of Southwest Airlines’ debacle is not that it was “dumb” or “shortsighted.” Rather, it should make all of us think more deeply about the opportunity costs and benefits of small, or marginal changes in this efficiency-resiliency tradeoff. Southwest bet wrong, to be sure, but without the massive winter storm, many “experts” would probably still be singing praises about Southwest’s innovative and low-cost business model. 

Bob Jordan, Southwest’s CEO for the past 10 months, has inherited its aging software and promises to invest more in technology that presumably will make the airline more resilient. But there has been no word on changes to its point-to-point system, something that will doubtless take months to evaluate in the wake of the recent meltdown in operations. 

This brings us back to the response of the Federal government. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wrote Southwest a stinging letter, saying that the US federal government will “follow up” on the airline if it does not deliver promises on reimbursing all travel costs. 

But there is something else that could make airlines more accountable, and give all airlines more incentive to think harder about the potential impact of Black Swan events. If we had increased competition from more airlines, that would lead to more choice, especially in smaller cities. A 1993 American Economic Review study found that mergers between two airlines led to more market power and higher airfares, on average. For example, American Airlines now controls 90% of capacity at its hub in Charlotte, NC after the merger with US Airways in 2013.  The  city recorded the second highest jump in airfares in 2022, a phenomenon seen with previous airline mergers in smaller cities.  

Ordinarily, free entry into the marketplace would solve the problem of higher than normal profits, with the entry of hungry competitors bidding down prices. But that is held back by the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which according to a 2003 GAO report, requires that US citizens own or control at least 75 percent of the voting interests of US airlines. The primary reasons are: “(1) protection of the US airline industry, (2) regulation of international air service through bilateral agreements, (3) concern about allowing foreign aircraft access to US airspace, and (4) military reliance on civilian airlines to supplement airlift capacity.” 

These concerns seem very likely to serve as excuses to secure an oligopoly structure in many smaller cities and make our air travel system less resilient than it might otherwise be. After all, airlines like Southwest will truly learn their lesson if a competitor is available to scoop up customers after a catastrophic failure. That decision showcased a bet on efficiency which took the company in the wrong direction, away from resiliency. 

Our current laws forbidding foreign competition look a lot like the ones that held back imported cars in the 1970s, leading to some of the worst vehicles ever produced by the Big Three auto manufacturers. Regulations have their place, but will never be the leading reason for large companies to innovate, nor think more carefully, long-term about the marginal costs and benefits of increasing resiliency.

*About the author: Craig J. Richardson is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Economic Mobility at Winston-Salem State University. He also was an AIER Visiting Research Fellow from 2005-2012. He received his BA in economics  from Kenyon College and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Source: This article was published by AIER

UK train strike misery as Rishi Sunak tries to avert future industrial action

Key Heathrow and Gatwick services not running

Passengers stand outside the locked gates at the entrance to Southfields underground station in south London waiting for the first train of the day. PA

Simon Rushton
Jan 04, 2023

Rail strikes will cripple the UK network for the travelling public on Thursday as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks at new legislation to discourage industrial action in key sectors.

Two major rail unions are in disputes over pay, leaving few if any trains running on strike days.

Industrial action is also being taken by nurses, ambulance crew, airport staff and bus drivers amid a cost-of living crisis in which inflation topped 10 per cent but pay offers largely stayed well below that level.

READ MORE
London's Piccadilly Line delays add to rail strike nightmare

On Thursday, it is the train drivers from the Aslef union walking out. On Friday and Saturday, the Rail, Maritime and Transport union resumes its industrial action.

For travellers, it has cut train services by up to 80 per cent.


Mr Sunak is poised to announce as early as Thursday his plans for new legislation to curb strikes, The Times reported late on Wednesday.

He wants legislation that enforces "minimum service levels" in six sectors, including health, rail, and border security, and that cover many of the high-profile strikes taking place this winter.
















A closed Birmingham Moor Street station during a strike by train drivers from the Aslef union, in a dispute over jobs and pensions. PA

His plan would require a proportion of union members to continue working to retain a "minimum level" of service.

“This legislation will remove the legal immunity for strikes where unions fail to implement a minimum level of service,” a government source told The Times.

"The strikes will be illegal. Ultimately, people could be fired for breach of contract."


Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan warned it was "inevitable" that further strikes would be held unless there was a breakthrough to the long-running dispute.

Mr Whelan said strikes could escalate, saying train drivers wanted to go "harder and faster" after years of not receiving a pay rise.

"The situation is getting worse and my members now want to go harder and faster because of the lack of progress,” he said.

"We are in a weird world where the government will do anything to keep private companies in the industry. It is inevitable that more strikes will be held and probably escalate.

"The train companies say their hands have been tied by the government, while the government — which does not employ us — says it's up to the companies to negotiate with us.


"We are always happy to negotiate, we never refuse to sit down at the table and talk, but these companies have offered us nothing, and that is unacceptable."

Among the operators which will run no trains all day on Thursday are Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Northern, Southern, Southeastern, Thameslink and TransPennine Express.

Rail links to the UK's two busiest airports will be cut, with Gatwick Express and Heathrow Express shutting down.

Areas where trains will run on Thursday include: Wales; the Central Belt, Fife and the Borders of Scotland; and parts of the South Western Railway network.

Services will also operate on London Overground and the Elizabeth line.


About 20 per cent of normal services will run, according to the Rail Delivery Group.

Companies affected by the strike are Avanti West Coast; Chiltern Railways; CrossCountry; East Midlands Railway; Great Western Railway; Greater Anglia; GTR Great Northern Thameslink; London North Eastern Railway; Northern Trains; Southeastern; Southern/Gatwick Express; South Western Railway (depot drivers only); SWR Island Line; TransPennine Express; and West Midlands Trains.
Winter strikes in Britain - in pictures

All The Beauty and the Bloodshed film explores Sackler scandal

Publishe

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Nan Goldin has protested around the world at various art galleries.

By Emma Jones

BBC Talking Movies

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras, caused a stir earlier this year when it became only the second documentary to win the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

It's a film that combines art and politics, explaining how a campaign led by photographer Nan Goldin prompted the world's leading museums and galleries to drop financial ties with the Sackler family, because of their link with the opioid drug OxyContin.

Poitras, who won a best documentary Oscar in 2014 for Citizenfour, about ex-CIA contractor Edward Snowden, thanked the Venice Film Festival jury at the time for "recognising that documentary is cinema".

Speaking more generally about her work, Poitras has said: "I do make films about political issues that I care about, but I want them to work as films. I'm passionate about cinema and every time a documentary is successful, it's successful for all of us who make them."

IMAGE SOURCE,VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Image caption,

Laura Poitras celebrates winning the Golden Lion in Venice

The movie is now on the longlist for best documentary at the Oscars and it's also being tipped to possibly become the first ever non-fiction film to get an Academy Award best picture nomination.

• Sacklers win immunity from further opioid litigation
• The US opioid crisis in numbers
• New York’s Met museum to remove Sackler name

It tells the story of how New York-based Goldin and the advocacy organisation Pain (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) took direct action at the world's most famous art galleries in protest at their ties with the Sacklers. Museums including the V&A, the Tate in London and the Louvre in Paris have dropped their connections.

The Sackler-owned company, Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, reached a settlement this year with several US states for its role in the US opioid crisis. Millions of people in the US have become addicted to opiate-based painkillers such as fentanyl and OxyContin, while nearly half a million deaths there were attributed to painkiller overdoses between 1999 and 2019.

The story was also made into an Emmy award-winning drama series, Dopesick, starring Michael Keaton.

But what has led publications including The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, to call the Poitras film both "exquisite" and "lacerating," is the director's weaving of Goldin's own history through the narrative.

The 68-year-old photographer was addicted to OxyContin herself at one point, but she is best known for her ground-breaking artistic career, including being the first to curate a group exhibition about the Aids epidemic, called Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing in 1989.

IMAGE SOURCE,ALTITUDE

Image caption,

Goldin (left), pictured in the 1970s, has always put politics at the forefront of her work

"I started doing these interviews with Nan for the documentary and I was so moved by them, her work and her life that I knew it had to be the heart of the film," Poitras explains.

"I knew I wanted to interweave these portraits and also show some parallels between what drives her as an artist and the relationship between art and politics. Her work is so close to the heart, but also so political.

"She created a national controversy in the US with that exhibition in 1989, she was losing her community and generation to the Aids crisis. There's something about Nan, that she ends up being on the right side of history again and again. She stands up for truth and rejects this notion of the status quo."

While documentaries such as Asif Kapadia's portrait of musician Amy Winehouse, Amy, and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, an investigation into the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have done well at the box office, it's still very rare for a non-fiction film to beat a feature movie in awards categories.

In 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 was only the second documentary ever to win the Cannes Palme D'Or prize - but it didn't go on to be nominated in the Oscar best picture or even documentary categories.

"To me though, it makes sense that All the Beauty and the Bloodshed won the Golden Lion at Venice and is being mentioned as a potential best picture nominee," says film critic and festival programmer Kaleem Aftab.

"It felt like an American story, there's an important message as well as an exploration of who Nan Goldin is, and in the US, this news story is big, so I can see why it might strike a chord with Julianne Moore, who led the Venice Film Festival jury this year, and just resonate with audiences in the US generally. I agree having an American subject matter helps push you into the awards conversation - but then the Oscars are the American Academy Awards."

• Sackler Trust suspends new UK donations
• Tate art galleries shun more Sackler money
• National Portrait Gallery drops £1m donor

Aftab adds, however, that even in the documentary category, the film could face stiff competition from other non-fiction films including Navalny by Daniel Roher, another politically-charged documentary about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and All That Breathes by Shaunak Sen, a cinematic exploration of two brothers' attempts to protect black kites dropping from the sky in Delhi's polluted air. Both are also on the Oscar longlist for best documentary.

"This year has been incredibly strong for documentaries, and their winning speaks to me of how they're becoming increasingly validated and watched in exactly the same ways feature films are being watched," Aftab explains.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

A woman grieving for her daughter at an event calling for the prosecution of the Sacklers in 2021

Poitras says that her job as a filmmaker is to "hold people to account - we need to celebrate independent adversarial reporting, and documentary-making is one of those ways of doing it".

Reflecting on the story of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed though, Poitras thinks the success of Nan Goldin and Pain's campaign against the Sackler family name was "limited."

"In some ways the film is about impunity - no-one is facing jail time, or being indicted, or had to file for bankruptcy, but the family name has been shamed in cultural spaces, and that's some kind of success, but it's limited.

"The Sackler name does remain publicly in some spaces, but in fewer and fewer of them every day. The Louvre was the first to take the Sackler name down, the V&A did too, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and they're successes Nan should celebrate. It was a long overdue debate and only brought to the fore by people who were willing to take risks."

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed will be released in UK and Irish cinemas on 27 January 2023.

China’s Shifting Persian Gulf Policy: Is It Favoring The GCC Over Iran? – Analysis


Saudi Arabia’s King Salman receives China’s President Xi Jinping in Riyadh. (SPA)

January 5, 2023

Observer Research Foundation
By Vali Golmohammadi

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia on 7 December 2022 has marked a turning point in Beijing’s foreign policy towards the Persian Gulf states. This three-day trip included three summits: One with President Xi and the Saudi Crown Prince on behalf of King Salman; a second between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states; and a third among China and the Arab League—a regional organisation with 22 member states. As expected, Xi’s trip to Riyadh was motivated primarily by energy interest amidst the ongoing fluctuation in global energy markets after the Russia-Ukraine war.

Saudi Arabia has been the largest crude oil supplier to China since 2020, and Beijing plans to increase the import of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the region. Apart from 34 agreements worth US $30 billion signed in the infrastructure, information technology, and green energy sectors, Beijing and Riyadh are set to expand their strategic partnership at a time when the two states’ relations with the United States (US) are increasingly frayed. During his summit with the GCC states, President Xi noted his trip heralded a “new era” in China-Arab partnership. In the first China-GCC summit, all sides also agreed to adopt a five-year joint action plan for strategic dialogue and to develop their partnership in various security and economic issues, including the Iran nuclear programme and regional issues.

What made the China-GCC summit unexpected for Tehran is the anti-Iran statementthat Xi signed with the GCC states. The joint statements released during the first China-GCC summit have left statesmen in Tehran wondering if there is a shift in Beijing’s strategy towards the Gulf region, especially in a situation where the US is stepping away from its security commitments there. This unexpected statement referred to Iran as a ‘supporter of regional terrorist groups’, ‘proliferator of drones and ballistic missiles’, and ‘destabiliser of regional security’. It further called on Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), adhere to the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty, not interfere in the internal affairs of neighboring countries, and reach a solution with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the issue of the three Iranian islands through bilateral negotiations. In response, Tehran immediately summoned China’s envoy over a joint statement with the GCC, reaffirming that the three islands of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs located in the Persian Gulf are inseparable and eternal parts of Iran.
Shift in China’s policy towards the Persian Gulf

It seems that China’s long-standing neutral stance towards the Persian Gulf region is shifting. Taking the GCC’s side against Iran would increasingly challenge China’s balancing act in the Persian Gulf. Although it is not an easy task to argue whether China is favouring the GCC over Iran in the Persian Gulf, there are multi-level and multidimensional drivers that unfold the incentives behind China’s recent move in switching allegiance to the GCC Arab monarchies.

First, the GCC’s stance towards China has shifted significantly. The China-GCC states partnership is evolving within the shifting global and regional context. The GCC leaders have long manifested their rising concerns over the security consequences of the US disengagement from the region. The GCC expects China to support its security initiatives in pushing back Iran’s regional influence and deterring its military activities. For China, the most difficult part of deepening strategic ties with the GCC is managing its relations with Iran. However, As Iran’s levers in the regional balance of power weaken and its tension with the West intensifies, China moves less cautiously towards strengthening its partnership with Tehran’s rivals in the region.

Moreover, the young Arab monarchies find themselves in an unprecedented position to assert their strategic autonomy. By deepening strategic partnership with China, the Arab monarchies aim to send a message to Washington that they have alternative great power options. One of Riyadh’s motivations in expanding military relations with China has been to provide more options for itself in response to the Western pressures and arms embargos against Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war. Although China’s increasing engagement in the Persian Gulf is not intended to replace the US, at least in the mid-term, the Arab states have growing tendencies to involve China in regional affairs.

Second, increasing levels of engagement in the Persian Gulf demonstrate that China seeks to play a larger role in shaping the prospect of regional arrangements. Although ordering the chaotic Middle East is not a Chinese priority, Beijing came to the conclusion that China’s supposedly active role in this region could provide effective levers to balance the US’s pivot to Asia policy. Accordingly, in recent years, China’s Persian Gulf policy appears to rest on bringing America’s strategic partners closer to itself, and avoiding entanglements in the regional disputes where the US engaged, more specifically the Iran case. Moreover, the more influence China can exert on the GCC’s economic sectors, the more power it will gain to balance US supremacy in the wider Middle East.

Third, for China, the GCC states are more reliable economic and energy partners than sanctioned Iran. China prefers certain, stable, and high-return investments. China’s engagement in the Gulf is motivated primarily by maintaining access to energy resources. China imports around 32 percent of its crude oil from the GCC states. Iran, meanwhile, is losing its share in Chinese energy imports and investment. Iran’s oil exports have dropped significantly due to the US sanctions imposed in May 2019, and Chinese buyers are always worried about the prospect of continued energy relations with sanctioned Iran. While Tehran expects China to invest around US $400 billion in Iran’s economy, according to a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement signed in March 2021, Chinese businesses remain entangled over the risks of their investment in Iran. Unlike Iran’s expectation, China also signed a massive 27-year gas deal with Qatar, providing China with 4 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year. The emerging trend in the Persian Gulf is that China is deepening its multidimensional ties with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar while leaving Iran out in the cold.

Forth, given the deadlock in reviving of Iran nuclear deal and anti-government protests over the recent months, for Beijing, the prospect of a partnership with Tehran is a strategic waiting game. Due to the lack of a promising prospect of revitalising the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the continuation of US sanctions, the Chinese are reluctant to invest in Iran’s battered economy. Amidst the rising uncertainty about the prospect of political and economic stability inside Iran, China prefers to pursue a “wait-and-see” policy towards Iran. The bitter fact for Iranian policymakers is that China does not see Iran as a strategic partner against the US. Chinese leaders are also confident that Iran has not any alternative other than China in balancing the US hostility and, therefore, they came to the calculation that China’s siding with the GCC against Iran would not result in Tehran’s harsh reaction. Now there are rising concerns in Tehran that the “Look to East Policy” with China centrality cannot provide Iran’s national interests.

A new regional security arrangement?

In the bigger picture, it seems China started to revise its traditional policy of a balancing act in the Persian Gulf in the aftermath of the Ukraine war. However, Beijing’s increasing engagement in the Persian Gulf does not necessarily mean that China aims to replace the US and finance a new security system. China is increasingly preparing itself to face the US, and, as a result, partners like Iran, which has not reached a clear vision about the type of partnership it wants with China, are left out of the Chinese priority in the Persian Gulf. But it is still too early to conclude that China has turned its back on Iran because China’s grand strategy rests on working with all countries in the region.

In the short term, despite the GCC’s increasing willingness to involve China in the region geopolitically, Beijing will still give more weight to geoeconomics considerations. For the time being, China is reluctant in challenging the US-led regional security arrangement in the Gulf region, but rather is confident to oppose any destabilising factors including Iran. In the foreseeable future, maintaining stability and security in the Persian Gulf to ensure energy flows will remain one of the few areas of convergence between the US and China.

Observer Research Foundation

ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.

Vietnam arrests a man who made critical Facebook comments about his employer

The country has a history of coming down hard on people who speak out.

POST MODERN STALINISM

By RFA Vietnamese
2023.01.04

Vietnam Facebooker Hoang Van Vuong in an undated photo. Hoang Van Vuong/Facebook

Vietnamese authorities arrested a man on Tuesday on unknown charges after he posted two short messages on his Facebook page that appeared to criticize his former employer, a water purification company.

The first post on Hoang Van Vuong’s page said, “Whoever has party membership should establish clean water companies to sell dirty water but receive payments for clean water. Easy earn!” 

The second post said, “Clean water companies provide dirty water. Who is held responsible?”

Vietnam has come down hard in recent years on activists and individuals who make critical comments on Facebook, which is widely used in the Southeast Asian nation, arresting them on vague charges of “abusing the rights of freedom and democracy” or “spreading anti-state propaganda.”

Last year, authorities convicted and imprisoned at least 31 such people, handing out prison terms ranging from one to eight years.

Vuong’s younger brother, Hoang Van Quoc, told Radio Free Asia that on Tuesday, Vuong received a call from his former employer asking him to come to the office to pick up a New Year’s gift. Police at the scene then arrested him. 

Then the police went with him to his house, asked that the electricity be cut off and read out a house search warrant. They confiscated a camera, a cell phone and a broken laptop. said Hoang Van Long, his older brother.

After that, they made a record of the house search, made six copies, and had Vuong sign one before taking him away, Long said. The police didn’t tell the family what he was arrested for. 

Tuyen said he was surprised by the arrest because Vuong was not an influential political dissident and he did not post messages often on Facebook.

Vuong, 44, began voicing critical viewpoints in 2011 and as a result was detained and beaten by authorities that year and in 2012, Tuyen said.  

“He is an ordinary person and does not belong to any organization,” Tuyen said. “He spoke up whenever he saw injustice. He only talked about what he witnessed. He sometimes took part in a demonstration together with me or other groups.” 

Thong Nhat district police told RFA that they did not have the authority to respond to inquiries about the arrest and suggested contacting Dong Nai provincial police. But someone there said provincial police had not conducted the arrest, and referred RFA back to district authorities. 

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Malcolm Foster.