Taiwan and the Formosa disaster in Vietnam : the sound of silence

Ten years after a toxic waste dump poisoned Vietnam’s coast, the Taiwanese company responsible, both governments, and even the victims themselves have maintained a stunning silence.

On January 12, 2024, Nancy Bùi and dozens of colleagues from various civil society organizations demonstrated in front of the White House to demand justice for the victims of the 2016 ecological disaster caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, a subsidiary of the Taiwanese Formosa Plastic Group (FPG). The discharge of toxic waste affected 250 kilometers of the Vietnamese coastline, ruining the livelihoods of people in Hà Tĩnh, Nghệ An, Quảng Trị, and Quảng Bình provinces.

Alongside the star-spangled banner was a yellow banner with three horizontal red stripes, representing freedom, democracy, and cultural heritage. This flag was the national flag of the State of Vietnam (1949-1955), initially a state of the French Union led by Emperor Bảo Đại and later a fully independent state from France. Subsequently, it became the national flag of the now-defunct Republic of Vietnam (1955-1975). Although the South Vietnamese nation ceased to exist, the flag is still widely used in Vietnamese diaspora communities, many of whom fled the country during and after the fall of Saigon. 

The flag is now technically banned in the unified Vietnam under the Communist Party, and there have been instances of public figures facing heavy consequences for being associated with it, or just being seen near it. Yet at that January 2024 protests, the flag bearers represented 7,815 victims from various communities from the northern central part of Vietnam. These victims not only suffered from an unprecedented injustice caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel,  but were also suppressed by their own government in their efforts to defend their rights. Demonstrations demanding accountability for the spill are all but impossible inside Vietnam today. 

“Thousands of victims have still not been compensated, and the polluted areas remain inadequately restored,” said Bùi, co-founder Justice For Formosa Victims (JFFV), a U.S.-based non-profit that seeks compensation for the Vietnamese victims of the Formosa disaster. “Dozens of political prisoners remain behind bars simply for speaking up on behalf of voiceless victims. These fishermen did nothing wrong, and their supporters bravely raised their voices on their behalf. All deserve to return to their everyday lives. Victims need fair compensation so they can rebuild their lives and communities.”

Ten years have elapsed, marked by stunning silence from the company, concerned governments, and more paradoxically, the victims themselves. As Vietnamese victims face huge risks in seeking justice on their own, international actors have joined forces to right the wrong, though with limited success. 

Question marks still continue to swirl as to why justice has been delayed or outright denied to jobless, penniless, and voiceless victims. With Vietnam’s government showing its unwillingness to press the issue, activists at home and abroad are calling on the Taiwanese government to show its true commitment to democracy and the protection of human rights by holding Formosa Ha Tinh Steel and its parent company accountable.

The Communist Party Favors the Capitalist Actor 

Over the past decade, the JFFV has filed lawsuits against the company in Taiwan, lobbied in the United States, and filed a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Office on behalf of the Vietnamese victims. According to Bùi, the U.S. offer to assist in assessing the extent of the damage in Vietnam was turned down, though experts from Germany, Singapore, and Japan were invited. 

“From the outset, we understood that the victims themselves could not pursue justice within Vietnam due to the government’s brutal crackdown,” said Bùi. “The Vietnamese authorities sided with Formosa to secure the company’s role in boosting the regional economy, while at the same time covering up their own corruption.”

In May 2024,  the Working Group on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises, along with seven Special Rapporteurs on various aspects of human rights, sent allegation letters to Formosa Ha Tinh Steel and the Vietnamese government.

In response, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel described the 2016 disaster as “an isolated environmental accident.” In a letter of response dated September 2024, the company asserted its adherence to both Vietnamese laws and international standards in implementing various environmental protection, industrial safety, and occupational health and safety measures. Plus, it claimed to have fulfilled its duty toward the affected people by making a payment of $500 million to the government. 

“The Vietnamese government has used the funds to compensate the affected individuals for their personal and property losses and loss of work, and to implement various measures to restore livelihoods, safeguard their health, and rehabilitate marine ecology, which was reported by the Vietnamese media at that time,” Formosa Ha Tinh Steel insisted in the letter.

“The impact of the April 2016 event on the locals was brought under control in the shortest time possible, and a nearly full recovery was achieved in May 2018,” the company added.

Its reply matches with the messaging in Vietnamese domestic media. The Vietnamese government had full power to officially decide who are the victims, who would be compensated, and whether justice has been done to both the people and the environment. Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, by its own admission, compensated the Vietnamese government rather than paying damages to the people directly impacted by its disaster. 

Unfortunately, contrary to what the government concluded, justice is still denied to many victims – people from the most climate-vulnerable and economically disadvantaged regions of Vietnam. The Vietnamese government mainly gave compensation to those who live in Ha Tinh. 

Formosa Plastics Group, one of Taiwan’s largest private industrial conglomerates, did not provide any reply to the U.N. Working Group’s May 2024 letter. The government of Vietnam requested a one-month extension to respond, but has not said anything since.

Formosa Plastics Group and Formosa Ha Tinh Steel did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Expecting the Vietnamese government to retract its statements and revisit the case in a rights-based manner is likely wishful thinking. Consider an example from Vietnam’s history. After the Maoist land reform was introduced in Vietnam in the 1950s on the advice of Chinese advisers, landlords were killed and their families persecuted. Eventually, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) acknowledged that it had made a mistake, but it deterred others from mulling over it. Justice, in the eyes of the party, had been done simply by providing rhetorical acknowledgement. After that, the CPV was more interested in halting public discussion rather than restoring justice. 

The U.N. faces its own challenges in amplifying the incident. Given that Taiwan has no seat at the United Nations due to the one China policy, the U.N. Working Group has no way to directly involve Taiwan in this matter. Instead, the Working Group sent its letter regarding Formosa Ha Tinh Steel to the government of the People’s Republic of China. 

“The letter regards China as the ‘home state’ of Formosa Plastics Group,” explained Pasha L. Hsieh, a professor of law at Singapore Management University. “The problem is that China has no de facto jurisdiction over Taiwan or corporations based in Taiwan.” 

Unsurprisingly, the government of China has not replied.

“The Working Group operates under a mandate focused on business conduct and human rights, and not on questions of sovereignty or political status,” said Dr. Pichamon Yeophantong, chair of the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights.

 “In line with established U.N. procedures, communications are directed to states recognized within the UN system. Engaging the PRC in this context reflects those institutional parameters and does not imply any position on the political status of Taiwan or on jurisdictional questions,” Yeophantong added.

Even if it did take up the matter, it is doubtful whether China – which, like Vietnam, is a one-party, communist-ruled state – would provide a meaningful, victim-centered response. In fact, according to research by the Business and Human rights Resource Center, China-funded operations in Asia-Pacific recorded the highest number of human rights violations.

Silence From Taiwan

With no meaningful action forthcoming from Vietnam or Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, there is one actor left to pressure: the Taiwanese government. Taiwan is consistently among the highest-scoring of the Asia-Pacific nations on indices measuring democracy and freedom. How Taiwan delivers justice to Vietnamese victims of the ecological disaster will be a key test of its real commitment to democracy.

“The Taiwanese government, despite its claims of being the most vigorous defender of human rights in Asia, ultimately turned its back on the victims harmed by its own corporation,” said Bùi. “Unfortunately, in this case, Taiwan’s actions did not meet its human rights commitments.”

In 2016 – ironically, the same year as the ecological incident – Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ing-wen launched the New Southbound Policy, Taiwan’s first flagship project with Southeast Asia. Despite Tsai’s emphasis on Taiwan as a regional leader on human rights, the New Southbound Policy focused heavily on economic ties. The promotion of human rights is not high on the agenda.

Neither the Taiwanese government nor the public have shown any interest in the 2016 toxic waste dump in Vietnam.

Eleven Taiwanese specialists did not respond to requests for comments on the FPG’s political impunity. 

Hsin-Hsuan Sun, director of Corporate Accountability and International Affairs at the Taipei-based Environmental Rights Foundation (ERF), said that, while the team does not encounter any legal obstacles inside Taiwan, the lack of public interest remains a key challenge. 

“Local media attention is not enough to become a leverage,” said Sun. “The media is not strong enough to make our government do something.”

The ERF’s 2025 report “Unchecked and Unaccountable The Sustainability Crisis at Formosa Plastics Group” noted that Formosa Plastics Group – Taiwan’s largest industrial conglomerate, which accounts for 10 percent of the island’s GDP– is a serial offender against environmental regulations. With a track record of large-scale disasters in Cambodia, the United States, Vietnam, and Taiwan, the company and its subsidiaries have brought untold damage to human health, local ecosystems, and the global climate.

Taiwan does have, on paper at least, a strategy for forcing corporate accountability. Its National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights, adopted in 2020 and revised in 2024, aims to localize the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The plan specified that human rights abuses by Taiwanese companies occurring overseas are “subject to the jurisdiction of Taiwan’s judicial authorities regardless [of] whether the offense is punishable or not under the law of the land where the crime is committed.” However, the plan has no legal force and has yet to be put into action.

Dr. Bonny Ling, the executive director of Work Better Innovations, a U.K.-based social enterprise working on promoting a responsible economy, argued that the language of Taiwan’s National Action Plan (NAP) highlights its lack of readiness to act.

“Why are we still at the stage where, regarding state‑based judicial mechanisms to provide remedies for victims of human rights or environmental harm caused by Taiwanese companies overseas, the Taiwanese government states that it ‘needs to conduct research’ on how to provide effective remedies?” Ling asked.

“This is far too passive. The NAP urgently needs updating,” she added. “By delaying the release of the next NAP and the long‑awaited human rights due diligence guidelines, the government – particularly the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which has not sufficiently and proactively recognized human rights and environmental risks as serious operational and reputational challenges for Taiwanese companies abroad – is failing to support Taiwanese businesses to become the success stories that they seek and ones that Taiwan needs to meet the global challenges of today.”

If the case has accomplished anything so far, say the activists involved, it is the Taiwanese court’s assertion of jurisdiction over matters involving Vietnamese nationals that occurred in Vietnam, which is quite unprecedented. Eric Guan Huei Lu, an attorney with the ERF, said that the Formosa case in Vietnam has set a new precedent for future transboundary cases, especially when it comes to jurisdiction of Taiwanese courts.

The case was initially denied in two lower courts, but Taiwan’s Supreme Court intervened on October 18, 2020. It authorized non-Taiwanese to sue Taiwanese actors, like Formosa Plastics Group, in Taiwanese courts in cases where they cannot sue in their country of origin. 

Yet in other ways, the Taiwanese Supreme Court stuck to a strict interpretation of the law in ways that disadvantaged those seeking justice for Vietnamese victims.

“The Supreme Court seemed to insist firmly on its legal interpretation that a power of attorney must be notarized, so we filed a constitutional lawsuit,” said Lu. “We also argued about this issue with the Supreme Court many times. Under Taiwan’s laws, there is no requirement that private documents we submit must go through notarization. So if the court insists that we must get notarization , this could end up imposing a restriction that does not actually exist in the law.”

According to the ERF attorney, if the Supreme Court insists on fact-checking the authenticity of this document, there are many ways to do it without absolutely relying on notarization from overseas missions. 

“You could simply have the parties appear in court, in person or online, and state, ‘Yes, this is what I signed.’ That would be enough to confirm the document’s authenticity without any problem,” he said.

“Even when we brought the constitutional lawsuit to the Constitutional Court, the Constitutional Court did not directly respond to our argument – it dismissed our case. So under the current circumstances, regarding this interpretation, it can be said that there is essentially no chance of overturning it.”

Despite the steep odds, Bùi and her allies will continue to apply pressure so that the Vietnamese victims’ decade – and counting – of suffering would not drift into silence.

“I hope the international community recognizes their plight and pressures Formosa, the Vietnamese government, and the Taiwanese government, all of whom bear responsibility for ensuring justice for these vulnerable people,” said Bùi.

By Christelle Nguyen – The Diplomat – April 6, 2026