~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnam launches web site to tap overseas community

HANOI - Vietnam launched Tuesday its first Web site designed specifically to serve three million overseas Vietnamese, or Viet Kieu, whom Hanoi is courting as a source of valuable foreign exchange and expertise. The site was launched a day ahead of the return of arguably the most-famous Viet Kieu, former South Vietnam premier General Nguyen Cao Ky. He is coming back to Vietnam for the first time since the war ended in 1975.

Remittances are one of Vietnam's key sources of foreign exchange. Last year it received $2.70 billion in overseas remittances. The central bank has forecast remittances to rise to between $3.2 billion and $3.5 billion this year.

Le Truyen, a standing committee member of the Communist party's mass organization Fatherland Front, said the Web site would help "tighten the emotional ties of the far-away children toward their homeland." He said at the launch ceremony that the Web site (www.nguoivienxu.vietnamnet.vn) would give Viet Kieu a chance to receive "accurate and full information so that they would have a correct view of the internal situation."

A number of overseas Vietnamese, particularly those who live in the United States, are among the sharpest critics of the communist country, sometimes lobbying the U.S. Congress to rebuke Vietnam over human and religious rights. Around 2.7 million people of Vietnamese origin live abroad, along with 340,000 Vietnamese laborers working overseas.

Reuter - January 13, 2004.