Peace Without Poison

government started fluoridating the water in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, the country’s largest citiesand by 1999 the total fertility rate declined to 2.3.In 2003, the government of Vietnam issued the National Strategy on Population (VCPFC)2001-2010 with the objective of reaching replacement level fertility by 2005.In 2005, when the country had already reached replacement level fertility, the Central PartyCommittee issued Resolution 47 to reaffirm population control as necessary “to sustain higheconomic growth” until Vietnam becomes “an industrialized country”.In 2008, the government openly restricted family size in Article 10 of the Population Ordinanceas follows:“Each couple and individual has the right and responsibility to participate in thecampaigns on population and family planning, reproductive health care: (i) decide timeand birth spacing; (ii) have one or two children, exceptional cases to be determined bythe Government” (The National Assembly of Viet Nam, 2009).And in 2009, the Chief Executive Trương Tấn San stated that the population of Vietnam will becontrolled to peak at 100 million by 2020 and instructed the Assembly to develop a new Law onPopulation by 2015. The Assembly complied and formulated the National Strategy onPopulation and Reproductive Health 2011-2020 which is to be implemented by the GeneralOffice for Population and Family Planning (GOPFP) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) at a timewhen Vietnam needs to control the fertility of the largest cohort of women of reproductive age inits history, 25 million.As a result, the government of Vietnam started salt fluoridation in 2008, intensified its programof forced surgical sterilization of women in remote areas that cannot be reached by either covertchemical or overt family planning services, and expanded its program of involuntary chemicalsterilization with Quinacrine hydrochloride, which is aided and abated by the internationalcommunity and overseen by western doctors and scientists with funding from Family HealthInternational (FHI).First, what the history of population control in Vietnam shows us is that while its legalframework has gradually come out of the dark, its methods have been gradually perverted by theinternational community. Open, transparent and legal methods of population control have beenreplaced with hidden, involuntary and unlawful methods that chemically poison the people intosterility, as throughout the western world.Second, Vietnam’s experience also shows that in modern times, unlike in the past, war isineffective as a method of population control. Even though 3 million soldiers and civilians died948 | P a g e