The US decision to suspend funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) is receiving strong support from the Vietnamese public. Whether the support of the Vietnamese people comes from the “anti-China” mentality, especially when the US and some EU countries accuse WHO of failing to fulfill their responsibilities and support for the initial false information of China, causing the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic spreading around the world?
Trump accused WHO of making a fatal mistake and overly trusting China.
A statement by the White House on Wednesday said the WHO had “disappointed” the American people.
“The American people deserve more from WHO, and there will be no more funding until their mismanagement, cover and failure can be investigated,” the statement said.
Most Vietnamese believe that the US cutting subsidies to WHO is a “wise decision.”
“The World Health Organization (WHO) is a typical type of‘ people working against their supporters, so it is true that the US cuts subsidies. Bravo for the wise decision of President Donald Trump!” Lawyer Le Cong Dinh publicly expressed his support on his personal Facebook page for the decision of the head of the US.
As a donor for the poor and those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in Vietnam, businesswoman Le Hoai Anh told VOA that she “resented” those who had allowed the disease to spreading and causing unpredictable consequences on the lives and economic and social life of people around the world.
“I am indignant so I endorse the investigation and if he really is to resign, then it must be done to clean the apparatus, make sure there is no lobby, control, and support for China,” Ms. Le Hoai Anh said.
Similarly, blogger Nguyen Dinh Ngoc also said that President Donald Trump’s decision was “completely satisfactory” when WHO has “failed to fulfill its very important responsibilities” in recent years.
“The global epidemic situation has shown today that the role of the WHO is to be completely negligent and irresponsible in order to spread this virus from one locality, China’s Wuhan worldwide,” Mr. Ngoc told VOA.
“Escape from China’s influence” is the current popular psychology of Vietnamese and also international public opinion.
According to VOA’s observation, all posts on social networks that support President Trump’s decision have received enthusiastic support from the Vietnamese public.
There is an opinion that Vietnamese people often give strong support to decisions and events that are detrimental to and related to China.
Entrepreneur Le Hoai Anh acknowledges that anti-Chinese sentiment may be part, but not entirely the reason why Vietnamese support the decision of the US president.
She said: “If I dislike China, I used to dislike it because of the islands and the things China did to Vietnam later such as environmental pollution. But in fact this pandemic had a huge impact on Vietnam, making them even more hated because the source of the disease was one, and the second was precisely because of the (non-transparent) information of the Chinese disease spread and have a profound impact on social life.”
Blogger Ngọc argues that the “anti-China” situation is taking place worldwide during this pandemic, and the support of the Vietnamese people in the US decision on WHO “is completely not biased.”
He further explained: “The anti-China mentality is not only Vietnamese, but is against Chinese civilized, irresponsible behavior around the world, not just Vietnam, and Vietnamese people also enjoy themselves in that righteousness.”
WHO fell into a stalemate after this fatal blow of the United States.
The US is currently the largest donor country to WHO, with more than $400 million last year, accounting for about 15% of its international funding.
From the perspective of a former expert working for the UN, Dr. Vu Quang Viet said that cutting the US budget on WHO at this time will have a “serious” impact on WHO activities, especially in the prevention of epidemics in poor countries like in Africa.
Dr. Viet said in an international organization such as WHO, with members from countries around the world, including countries like the US and China with a certain voice and weight, important decision making is not entirely at WHO.
He gave a typical example of the case of Taiwan, when there is a lot of criticism at WHO for handling the island’s problems in the view that this is a part of China. From there, it leads to the same regulations, recommendations and policies for Taiwan as for China.
“China is giving pressure. It is a member and also an important member of international organizations, so it uses its influence to get Taiwan out of WHO,” Viet said.
“I worked at the UN before and was in charge of statistics too. Of course, I always contact Taiwan, albeit unofficially, to get information from Taiwan for an overview of world statistics. But China always pressures on WHO not to be formally accepted and to not release data formally. Even internationally and the US recognize Taiwan as part of China, so it takes measures to prevent international organizations from working and having relations with Taiwan.”
According to Viet, for political issues, it is difficult for international organizations like WHO to avoid Chinese influence.
“Anyone sitting at WHO, being WHO Director General, is very difficult in this matter of decision,” said Viet, adding WHO does not have the right to decide anymore.
The former UN expert noted that the US and European countries also have experts in the World Health Organization. Therefore, the problem of not being aware early enough and the full danger of new strains of virus is not entirely the fault of WHO, not to mention the limiting factor of human understanding in general for this new virus. .
As of April 16, the corona virus has infected more than 2.1 million people and killed more than 141,000 worldwide.
A petition calling for WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to resign has also received more than 970,000 signatures out of one million required. But this website www.change.org has been blocked in Vietnam for a long time, probably after a call to sign the release of businessman Tran Huynh Duy Thuc.
The WHO Director-General is identified in the sentence: “The world must be grateful to China!”
On January 29, 2020, at the time when the world began to recognize the magnitude of the pandemic with the terrible killing of a virus from Wuhan, Mr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus again declared “China deserves our gratitude and respect.”
François Godement, Paris-based adviser at the Montaigne Institute in Paris, said: “The WHO Director-General regularly defends China in this crisis. There has never been a word of criticism against Beijing. He never questioned the numbers that China made, and some of his statements were clearly unacceptable.”
The author Bradley A. Thayer, professor at Texas-San Antonio University and Lianchao Han, vice president of Citizens Force organization, in The Hill newspaper emphasized, Mr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping, are responsible for the poor handling of the pandemic to make people dead.
Tedros turned a blind eye to what happened in Wuhan and other places in China. After meeting Xi Jinping in Beijing in January, he also helped China to offset the seriousness, spread, and magnitude of the new strain of corona virus.
From the beginning, Mr. Tedros defended China, despite Beijing’s extremely poor handling of the super-infectious epidemic. While the number of deaths has skyrocketed, it has taken months for the World Health Organization to declare Covid-19 a pandemic, despite the criteria of human-to-human transmission and mortality tall and has spread all over the world have met.
When Trump took an important step to prevent the Wuhan virus from crossing the U.S. border, with a travel ban on January 31, Tedros said that the ban on traveling to places and other restrictions are not necessary for ending the pandemic. That this could “increase fear and stigma, without much public health benefits.” He warned, shipping and trade interventions could be detrimental to the crisis settlement effort, and advised other countries not to follow the US.
Instead of focusing on efforts to fight the global pandemic, Tedros politicized the crisis, and helped Xi Jinping avoid responsibility for a series of wrongdoing in dealing with the epidemic. He used the WHO means to advocate for serious human rights violations by the Chinese government.
For example, from the discovery of the first case in November until the blockade of Wuhan City, and even now, China is still cheating on the origin and spread of the virus. Those who try to find out the truth are arrested or went missing, and their reports and articles are deleted online. China is not comprehensive and deceiving the world, and Tedros also participated in this effort by publicly praising Beijing’s “transparency” in the fight against the spread of the pandemic.
Trump has been heavily criticized for his decision to stop funding WHO in the context of a complex global corona virus pandemic.
Billionaire Bill Gates, a key donor of the WHO, said it was “very dangerous”
“Cutting the WHO grant money in a global health crisis is very risky. Their job is to slow the spread of COVID-19 and if its works are stopped, there is no other organization that can replace them. The world needs WHO more than ever,” Gates said in a tweet posted on his personal Twitter account on April 25.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said that this is “not the time” to cut funding for WHO, which “is extremely important to the world’s efforts to win the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.”
UK Prime Minister’s Spokesman Vladimir Johnson said there were “no plans” to stop funding and said the WHO had “an important role in leading global health-related responses.”
German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass tweeted that making WHO strong is one of the best investments that can be made at this time.
The American Medical Association said it was a “dangerous wrong step.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he sympathized with Trump’s criticism but WHO also carried out “a lot of important work.”
The president did “whatever it takes to deflect public opinion from the fact that his administration has handled this crisis badly,” said Democratic representative Eliot Engel.
The decision was “absolutely correct,” US Senator Josh Hawley said, among many Republicans who shared Mr. Trump’s views on WHO.
Vietnam is a country that has benefited quite a lot from the WHO’s assistance programs for the activities to protect people’s health, on the other hand recently, right at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The US will also directly support Vietnam with millions of dollars to prevent this dangerous spreading disease from China.
Although it was very difficult, Vietnam also supported the Chinese people with a total value of $500,000 to combat the pandemic, but shortly after that, the Beijing authorities replied by sending its coast guards ships to sink Vietnamese fishing boats in the contested the Hoang Sa (Paracels) in the East Sea (South China Sea).
Through this action, surely over 90 million Vietnamese people have realized who is friend and who is enemy.
Hoang Trung from Hanoi – Thoibao.de (Translated)
