News-Info-Alerts

Re: SEA Identifications

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: November 11, 2002

"AVeteran not buying policy on Vietnam

Activist says former enemy nation isn't cooperating with MIA search, supports boycott

By CAROL DeMARE, Staff writer
First published: Monday, November 11, 2002

After Vietnam veteran Kevin Kister returned home from a shopping trip last summer, he was shocked to see he had bought his wife a pair of jeans shorts made in Vietnam.

"I cut up the shorts and threw them out," Kister said. "They never even were worn."

Kister, 53, of New Scotland, is active in veterans' causes, and he is fired up over "Made in Vietnam" tags. He e-mailed friends and relatives urging them to check labels and boycott the merchandise. His motive is clear.

"Not only is Vietnam guilty of human rights violations, but they most certainly can provide critical information regarding the fate of some 1,903 military and civilian personnel unaccounted for from the war in Indochina, and they aren't," he said.

"Although the U.S. has normalized relations, we have the option of boycotting items manufactured there," said Kister, who served with the 4th Infantry Division.

He said he got the number of those unaccounted for from the National League of POW/MIA Families, which has lobbied for families for 25 years. The government puts the number at 1,904. Included on both lists are 130 from New York state, Kister said.

President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo with Vietnam in the mid-1990s. "I think Clinton was out of his mind," Kister said. "He jumped the gun." Normalization hinged on the condition that the Vietnamese government would cooperate on missing Americans.

Kister is not alone. Veterans groups and Rep. Michael McNulty, D-Green Island, are behind him.

Vietnam trade agreements must be renewed on a yearly basis, and every year McNulty sponsors the bill opposing continuance.

"Some of us believe they are not (cooperating) ... in regard to POW/MIA issues," McNulty said. Remains are coming back, he said, but slowly. "My point is, can't we wait until we get as full as possible an accounting of our missing in action. If we give up this one bit of leverage (by trading with them), that takes away their incentive to cooperate with us."

McNulty lost a brother in the war and feels the nearly 2,000 families of MIAs need closure. "Our family was devastated, but we got Billy's body back," he said. "We got it back in pieces, but we got it back." Bill McNulty, 24, a Navy medic who transferred to the Marines, was killed Aug. 9, 1970, when he stepped on a land mine while in the field patching up the wounded.

"I wouldn't mind spreading the word," the lawmaker said. "We shouldn't buy until we get free and unfettered access to all the areas we want to search."

Vietnam exports more than clothing. Kister found two wooden crates in a trash bin behind stores in Colonie. Recently, he was at the upscale Eastern Mountain Sports at Crossgates Mall and saw Vietnam labels on fanny packs and lightweight backpacking gear.

Harry McPherson, marketing director for Eastern Mountain Sports at its Peterborough, N.H., headquarters, said the stores do carry products made in Vietnam. Store policy is not to discuss company business, he said.

Vietnam-made merchandise has increased on shelves since last December, when "Congress voted to give (Vietnam) what used to be referred to as most-favored nation treatment so tariff rates came down to regular tariff rates that everyone else pays, and that's why their merchandise is starting to show up," said Laura Jones, executive director of the 200-member U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles & Apparel in New York.

Association members travel to Vietnam to do business and some believe the country "has the potential to be as good as China," she said. "We now buy Japanese cars and German goods," said Jones, whose brother served in Vietnam. "People have to put this aside."

Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of POW/MIA Families, whose brother is missing in Vietnam, said the league has not taken a position on a boycott. While it sounds good, if it failed "it would hurt the whole cause," she said.

The organization is pleased President Bush has added a footnote to the trade certification critical of the Vietnamese government for not taking needed steps, she said. The league hopes the message will be clear that Vietnam has to do more.

At the Tri-County Council of Vietnam-Era Veterans offices in Loudonville, "periodically someone will come in and toss down a pair of work gloves and say look at the label -- made in Vietnam," council president Lawrence Wiest said.

"Their position is they don't buy the stuff," Wiest said of the 400 members. A bumper sticker on the bulletin board reads "Boycott Vietnam."

Council member Bob Allyn, an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, said the United States has compromised its veterans. "And what they've done is gone to Vietnam and said, 'We'll bring you out of that third-world status and help bring big business in, such as Mobil Oil and Coca-Cola.' "

To boycott is "fighting the good fight," said Wiest, a captain in the Green Berets in Vietnam. "When you have all these major businesses over there, everything from Nike to oil companies to Coca-Cola ... you really wonder if there's ever going to be a full accounting."

Thanks to The Times Union of Albany NY.