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VIETNAM

Chinese berry pickers march in protest

Around 120 Chinese berry pickers went on a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) overnight march in northern Sweden on Thursday to protest their salaries, a local social services official said.

Chinese berry pickers march in protest

Thousands of seasonal workers from Asia, most of them from Thailand, come to Sweden each summer mainly to pick wild berries in the north under sometimes

difficult working conditions.

“Last night, around 120 Chinese berry pickers sat down on the road to protest,” Kerstin Asplund, who is in charge of social services in the northern municipality of Storuman, told AFP.

The protesters carried out their sit-in after hiking 15 kilometres, carrying signs reading “SOS” and “Help,” near the wooded area where they had been asked to pick berries, some 160 kilometres from the Arctic Circle.

“It is difficult to know what they want exactly, since there is a language barrier, but we know they are asking for an increase in pay,” Asplund said.

After their sit-in, monitored by police, the demonstrators were driven by bus to a public venue that had agreed to accommodate them.

“We have explained to their employer, a Chinese company, that it is their responsibility to take care of this. But they tell us they are not able to discuss with them, that they do not want to work,” Asplund said.

The demonstrators are part of a group of 200 Chinese berry pickers who arrived in Sweden’s isolated northern region in recent days.

After a disastrous season last year sent many of the foreign berry pickers home weighed down by debt instead of profits, they have this year for the first time been provided with contracts guaranteeing them a monthly wage of at least 16,372 kronor ($2,321).

Some Swedish unions however say the minimum salary is insufficient, pointing out that it in some cases is hardly enough to cover the money the workers have to shell out for things like plane tickets, housing and car rental.

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KIDNAPPING

Germany jails Vietnamese man who aided Cold War-style abduction

A German court on Wednesday sentenced a Vietnamese man to nearly four years in jail for taking part in a brazen Cold War-style kidnapping ordered by Hanoi of an oil executive from a Berlin park.

Germany jails Vietnamese man who aided Cold War-style abduction
Long N.H. standing trial in April in Berlin. Photo: DPA

Judges at the Berlin court said the 47-year-old Czech-Vietnamese national, identified as Long N.H., was guilty of aiding an abduction and working for a foreign intelligence service.

But they handed him a relatively mild sentence of three years and ten months after he confessed to his involvement.

“The accused knew of the plans of the Vietnamese secret service, but did not belong to the top level of command,” judges said in their verdict, according to DPA.

Long N.H. admitted during his trial that he rented the vehicle used in last July's abduction of fugitive Vietnamese state company official Trinh Xuan Thanh, who was spirited back to Hanoi.

Thanh – also a Communist party functionary who was seeking political
asylum in Germany – has since been sentenced to two life terms in Vietnam on corruption charges.

The 52-year-old and his companion were walking in Berlin's Tiergarten park when they were dragged into a van in broad daylight and smuggled back to Vietnam.

The German government was outraged, calling it a “scandalous violation” of its sovereignty.

Communist-ruled Vietnam has always insisted that Thanh, the former head of PetroVietnam Construction, returned voluntarily to face embezzlement charges.

Thanh's German lawyer, Petra Schlagenhauf, has described the kidnapping as
“like a story from the Cold War”.

Mystery route

Long N.H., was once among thousands of so-called guest workers in communist East Germany. He was later denied asylum and resettled in Prague.

He was arrested there last August and extradited to Germany days later.

He admitted renting the van used in the abduction in Prague and driving it to Berlin, but he was not at the wheel during the kidnapping. He then drove the van back to Prague.

It remains unclear exactly how Thanh was transported back to his home country, but investigators believe he was driven to the Slovakian capital Bratislava and then flown to Hanoi.

German media have reported that a Slovakian government plane lent to a visiting Vietnamese delegation at the time was involved in the transfer.

Slovakia has said it noticed nothing suspicious about the delegation or their flights, but warned Hanoi of harsh consequences if the allegations proved true.

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