General Giap Protests Planned Bauxite Mine's Impact On Environment In Letter To PM - AFP

[hatrack]

Vietnam's famed war hero General Vo Nguyen Giap has urged the communist government to reconsider plans for a major mining project, warning it would harm the environment and lives of ethnic minorities. Giap, in an open letter to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung published Wednesday by the online news site VietnamNet, called for a temporary halt to a major bauxite mining project in the Central Highlands region.

"I would like to propose to the prime minister to stop the implementation of bauxite exploitation" until its ecological impact is seriously studied by international experts, wrote the 97-year-old retired general.

Giap still carries much moral authority in Vietnam for leading the defeats of both the French colonial forces and the Americans as the military chief and close confidant of late revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

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Giap pointed to concerns of scientists and activists about "the serious risk to the natural and social environment posed by bauxite exploitation projects" and added, "However, these projects have still been implemented." The general wrote that in the early 1980s he had overseen a study on whether to mine for bauxite in the region, and that Soviet experts had advised against the project because of the "risk of serious ecological damage."

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