Justice For Fish

By Okechukwu Okugo

Towards the end of April, 2016, millions of dead fish were washed ashore from Vietnam's sea, prompting pockets of protests round some of their major and minor cities, like Nha Trang, Vung Tau, Da Nang, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, according to Victoria Ho, in an article published in Mashable.

While it was also reported that Vietnam's director of agriculture department, Nguyen Phuoc Trung, fingered polluted water in a canal, that had direct links from a sewage system, discharging waste-water into the surrounding waters and the canal. At the same time, local media sources and protesters had been linking plastic wastes from Formosa, a Taiwanese firm that produces plastic.

This had lead Formosa, issuing a formal press release, denying the accusations; but their denials were weakened by a form of acceptance from Vietnam's environment minister, who had disclosed the existence of Formosa's illegal waste pipe at one of its Steel plants, according to the Mashable article.

Subsequently, he had ordered that it be dug up. But maintaining, the pipe had not been officially linked to the deaths of the fish.

Despite these discrepancies in the messages of the government about the cause of the massive fish deaths, the government had been strongly bent on stifling the protests, than digging to the root cause of this gruesome damage to the world's ecosystem.


Scores held as Vietnam breaks up protest against Taiwanese firm accused of causing mass fish deaths.
Photo credit: www.scmp.com.  

In an unceremonious move, over the past weekends, it was discovered that officials had blocked the use of some social media networks, like Facebook, in order to incapacitate the organizers of the protest who were using it to communicate.

And that, now being the trend for some governments, moving very quickly to censor the use of some types of social media, rather than making more haste to tackle the source leading to such disagreements.

The death of these millions of fish, should have been thoroughly investigated, not just to pacify the protesting citizens, but to avoid further damage on the world's natural resources that cannot be replenished.
Further, it is an economic waste, that can pose even graver danger to the health of the people, if such toxins wash into drinking water wells.

Saving the planet should be the utmost of every responsible government; and such environmental and health issues should be distanced from the "maradoneering" processes of politics.


Demonstrators, holding signs, say they are demanding cleaner waters in the central regions after the massive fish deaths that number in millions. Photo credit: www.bbc.com.

(Opening image: A villager shows dead sea fish he collected on a beach in Phu Loc district. Source: www.bbc.com.)