For the sake of Vietnamese women, the Ministries of Public Security, Justice, and Foreign Affairs must work together to perfect the laws that govern marriage with foreigners, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan said at a national conference Friday.
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According to the Ministry of Justice’s statistics released at the meeting held in Can Tho City to discuss alien marriage laws, from 1995 to 2010, 294,000 Vietnamese citizens married foreigners or overseas Vietnamese from 50 countries and territories.
Of these, 65,000 were Vietnamese women who married Taiwanese and South Korean men and renounced their Vietnamese citizenship.
Many Vietnamese women married foreigners for economic reasons rather than with a view toward building a happy martial life, the ministry said.
Thus, a lot of young girls agreed to marry foreigners who were much older or even suffered from illnesses or disabilities, according to Dinh Trung Tung, Deputy Minister of Justice.
Tung said of these girls, quite a few were abused by their husbands or members of their husbands’ families.
Inadequate legal protection
However, officials at the meeting said the existing marriage laws in Vietnam hadn’t been able to cope with this growing phenomenon.
For instance, according to Major General Do Kim Tuyen, deputy head of the General Department of Crime Prevention and Control under the justice ministry, there is at present no criminal law to govern illegal marriage brokerage.
Tuyen said only administrative penalties were applied to illegal brokers and fines were too low to discourage further violations.
Tuyen said the Ministry of Justice should propose applying criminal charges to those engaged in illegal marriage brokerage related to foreigners.
Deputy Minister of Justice Tung said the ministry was indeed drafting new decrees about marriage with foreigners.
He said the ministry would also verify all marital status certificates granted by local people’s committees to Vietnamese citizens who married foreigners to ensure there was no violation.
Deputy Prime Minister Nhan said what authorities could also do was to help women who want to marry foreigners know about Vietnamese laws and regulations governing alien marriage, their potential husbands’ health and family situation, as well as the cultures and languages of these men before embarking on the journey.
