By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 3, 2000
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam –– With only bamboo mats to sleep on and plastic tarpaulins to shield them from afternoon downpours, almost 100 peasants have spent the past four months camping out on the sidewalk of one of this city's busiest thoroughfares, directly across the street from an office of the prime minister.
The haggard peasants are doing something long deemed taboo in one of the last communist countries: protesting against the government. In a muted but powerful act of civil disobedience, they have unfurled dozens of colorful banners detailing their grievances against Communist Party officials.
What is more remarkable, people here say, is that the government is tolerating the demonstration. Security forces have not attempted to tear down the banners or hustle the peasants into police vans, as they might have in years past.
The government's decision to endure the protest is the latest sign that Vietnam, long deemed one of the world's most repressive countries by human rights groups, is loosening up, according to diplomats and Vietnamese people.
President Clinton will arrive in Vietnam on Nov. 16 for several days--the first visit here by a sitting U.S. president in 31 years--and U.S. officials expect him to raise the issue of human rights.
"They're getting more tolerant," said a Western diplomat in Hanoi, the capital. "They're realizing that discourse is not the threat to stability they once believed."
It's a big change from the days of the postwar reeducation camps that drilled Marxist-Leninist teachings into millions of citizens of the former U.S.-backed government in South Vietnam.
Now, the country's Catholic churches are filled for Mass. Buddhist pagodas have sprung back to life. Newspapers are no longer exclusively government mouthpieces. Citizens are free to travel around the country and obtain visas to venture overseas. And some intellectuals have criticized official policy without suffering repercussions.
One of Vietnam's most famous authors, Duong Thu Huong, lashed out at the government in an interview in People magazine in April, before the 25th anniversary of the Communist victory over South Vietnam. Although she called the government "a bunch of liars" run by "corrupt, ignorant, incompetent leaders," she was not hauled off to prison.
Western human rights groups and the State Department acknowledge that Vietnam has improved its rights record in recent years, but they emphasize that it still does not meet international standards. Huong's comments notwithstanding, criticizing the Communist Party's authority still can result in a trip to jail.
The protesting peasants, for instance, are not challenging the party's supremacy but what they claim is corruption and unjust treatment by provincial officials. The protesters' banners include such comments as "We love the Party. We are not against the government. We just want our problems addressed."
Officially, the government does not welcome dissent. "Our government will not allow political power to be shared with any other forces," the party's secretary general, Le Kha Phieu, said in a speech last year. "Any ideas to promote 'absolute democracy,' to put human rights above sovereignty, or support multiparty or political pluralism, are lies."
Human rights advocates contend that Vietnamese officials have been harassing a breakaway sect of the Hoa Hao Buddhist Church, which the government has recognized despite the church's history of opposing the Communist Party. And supporters of Thich Quang Do, the 73-year-old deputy head of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, say he was detained by authorities when he tried to distribute food and money to flood victims in the Mekong Delta in early October.
Five U.S. senators--Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) and former Vietnam War prisoner John McCain (R-Ariz.)--recently sent Clinton a letter urging him to "press for significant, realistic and tangible progress in human rights" when he meets with Vietnamese officials next month.
A Clinton administration official said the president will likely raise human rights issues in private bilateral meetings with Vietnamese officials but probably will not criticize the government publicly. "Vietnam has made a lot of progress, especially in terms of religious rights," the official said. "But he'll point out a few of the areas where they need to do more work."
Among the steps that have heartened U.S. officials are an amnesty this year granted to more than 12,000 prisoners, including several considered by human rights groups to have been held for political and religious reasons.
The forces of globalization also are having a liberalizing effect on Vietnam. Foreign-language newspapers and magazines are available in big cities and many people have access to CNN and other Western channels on satellite television.
And Internet access has become increasingly available to people at cyber-cafes that have popped up across the country. Although the government blocks the Web sites of a handful of groups that advocate the overthrow of the Communist Party, there are no restrictions on Western news sites and message boards.
Then there's the street protest in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, the one-time capital of South Vietnam. Although the peasants hail from various towns on the outskirts of the city and from nearby provinces, they were drawn largely by word of mouth to the sidewalk on Le Duan Street because of a similar gripe: Local government officials forced them to vacate their homes. The peasants make a variety of accusations against the local party bosses, from outright corruption to poor planning of the relocation.
"We just want to settle our land problems," said a 45-year-old restaurant worker from the city's Binh Thanh district, who said his family was ordered to move to a new home five miles away that does not have a market or a medical clinic nearby.
"We were moved because the government wants to build a road where our house is," the man said. "But if the government wants to move us to another place, it should not have worse conditions."
A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that many of the peasants were squatters with no valid land claim to their previous residences.
But last week, in an unusual move, the chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Party committee issued a public apology to people who had been cleared from two areas near the city, including Binh Thanh. The chairman, Vo Viet Thanh, said he would resign if "local officials in the two cases were not strictly dealt with," the Saigon Times newspaper reported.
The government also said it will dispatch five high-level "inspection teams" to 15 cities and provinces to listen to growing complaints about corruption and property relocation.
One American who is a longtime businessman in Ho Chi Minh City said Clinton's visit could provide a key test of the government's attitude toward the demonstration. "He's certain to drive down that street, so the government may decide to move them away so the world doesn't think people here are oppressed," the businessman said. "But if the government is smart, they'll let them stay there to show that now there is a little more freedom of expression in Vietnam."