Following are excerpts of dissident Duong Thu Huong's latest article, dated May 1999, on the condition of human mind in Vietnam today.
Duong Thu Huong, currently living in Vietnam, was known to the outside world after the French government bestowed on this writer its highest national literature award for her novels - Paradise of the Blinds, and Beyond the Brim of Illusion. Both of them bared the souls of human lives in this socialist society.
... In our country, 25 years after the war, there is still no sound of piano through the windows and people only started timidly to learn the first lessons of democracy while enduring severe oppression. War in this place left a difference wake [than that in Europe]. War did not make people more mature, wiser, and bolder in making their civil rights count. In contrary, it made people more cowardly, easier to accept humiliation, and more ready to look down in the face of evils.
The devastating wars throughout the unfortunate history of Vietnam seem to have exhausted its people of bravery. Like any other characteristics [of human beings], the source of bravery is not limitless ... Bravery was summoned to the maximum during the turbulence of the country. Once the turbulence subsides, people accept easily anything just to survive. Regardless of the degree of suffering, they console themselves with "still better than the time of war and death". They rationalize indignity with "still better than death". The low value of human lives during war time does push some people closer to committing crimes but conversely, make the rest more submissive and passive. Researchers on Vietnam are often bewildered by the conundrum: how such a fearless people in war could be so fearful in peace. It is not a surprise to me at all. Where the democratic institution has not been erected and people have yet realized their innate rights as human beings, any brave soldier can return to a dull and fearful citizen.
In the absence of the sound of piano, there is only the kind of moaning music to console the dreamy minds that still reminisce the long lost glory over the far away horizon to cover up the bitterness in their present daily lives. Needless to say, the authorities love to bask themselves in and take full advantage of that psyche. In other words, the government is supported on the specter of war while the rulers are both taking full advantage of and being chased by those ghosts. Another contradiction, isn't it? ... Our ancestors used to say "gold disappears quickly, only soil stays". Indeed, the war must have taken away the noblest, the bravest, the most honest. Left behind are the cunning, the beggars, the ones that shout far in the back and pretend to wield their swords just enough to avoid the front line... How much conscience is left in such people?... How much conscience is left in those national smugglers, in the thieves of the monopolizing Party, in the children of the apparatchiks frequently flying to Hong Kong for prostitution and gambling at hundreds of thousands of dollars each time?
In the absence of light, darkness expands. In the absence of dignity, treachery flourishes. The motive for every policy and conduct no longer roots in patriotism but in self-interest. The rationality of greed silences those of conscience and ethics. To serve the quest for personal wealth, the past is used as a temple, no longer sacred but still enough to lure and deceive those dreamy and trembling souls. [Behind such temple is] a government built on the gun barrels. It readily wields the ax across the necks of those who, out of anger or curiosity, dare to raise the curtain to see how the daytime robbers divide their spoils. ... Foreign reporters often questioned why [the Vietnamese government chose to protest NATO role in Kosovo] after investing so much effort in luring the US and the West back. Well, dear reporters, it will cost you a lot more time and research to find the truth on this land. Because the truth is [the people in power] do not have pre-defined logic or motive. They go with the benefit at hand. Knowing their own incompetence and lack of characters to exist, they have to dig into the past and feed on the ghost of the war against Americans. They must lean on the temple and people's mindlessness to prolong their rule.
At any opportunity to bring back the potion: The glorious Party led the people to the victory over the American imperialists, they will take full advantage of it. NATO was the most recent opportunity. At the same time, being too weak to stand on their own and too weak to flip to another page of history - actually, they do not want to move to another page of history, they must take hold of their neighbor's coattail, hanging on to the floating debris of socialism after the ship [of the communist bloc] had been smashed into pieces. Only under the sign of socialism could they easily rob the population and transfer national properties into personal accounts in foreign banks. For such gain they must bow their heads in silence after the flashing slaps by their northern neighbors. It has always been true the greedy knows no shame. ... Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the end of the War, on this land there still is only the flapping sound of a flock of crows over the graveyards from North to South, from South to North.
That dove with the olive branch still hides at some cloudy sky on a far away shore ... waiting for a new dawn.