Hanoi grapples with peasant unrest<\/p>\n
By Ian Stewart<\/p>\n
DONG HUNG, Vietnam (AP): Like the colonial French in Vietnam
\nearlier this century and the feudal mandarins before them, the
\nCommunist Party is struggling to hold back a tide of peasant
\ndiscontent.<\/p>\n
In the impoverished central provinces -- the birthplace of
\nVietnam's communist patriarchs -- the peasants are bristling at
\ninequity.<\/p>\n
About 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of the capital, Hanoi, a
\nwave of protest in recent months has resulted in the arrest of
\nhundreds of villagers.<\/p>\n
Security forces have been deployed for months in Thai Binh
\nprovince, which is now veiled behind a curtain of secrecy.
\nForeign journalists are barred from the region.<\/p>\n
Accounts from human rights groups, former residents of Thai
\nBinh and official newspaper reports say dozens of communist
\nofficials have been stripped of their party membership while
\nseveral local governments have been disbanded.<\/p>\n
Corruption within village governments and the lack of official
\nresponse to the growing unrest led to the purges in Thai Binh,
\nthe central government has said.<\/p>\n
With the province in disarray, Hanoi is looking for answers.
\nThe underlying causes are as old as Vietnam: poverty,
\ninstitutional corruption and an abundance of natural calamities.<\/p>\n
"Poverty, abusive officials, contending claims to land, heavy
\ntaxes and other levies have a long history in Vietnam, as the
\nCommunist Party knows better than most," said Benedict Kerkvliet,
\na professor at Australian National University.<\/p>\n
In central Vietnam's Dong Hung district, centuries-old stone-
\ncarved soldiers stand a grim and rigid vigil over the tomb of
\ntheir fallen lord. Quan Man, the district mandarin who fell
\nvictim in the late 1700s to one of Vietnam's myriad peasant
\nrebellions.<\/p>\n
Two riotous centuries later, the peasants and farmers -- the
\npoorest of Vietnam's poor -- are again angry about economic
\ndisparities.<\/p>\n
"Rural society, which comprises four-fifths of the entire
\nnation, is becoming significantly more like the one against which
\nthe communists first mobilized the masses," writes socialist
\nhistorian Gabriel Kolko.<\/p>\n
With close to 80 percent of Vietnam's population living off
\nthe land, it is a potentially explosive problem.<\/p>\n
When Ho Chi Minh's communist forces drove the French from
\nnorthern Vietnam in 1954, all land was placed under state
\ncontrol. Under collectivized farming, peasants remained poor, but
\nequal.<\/p>\n
A shift in economic policy in 1988 and later accelerated in
\n1993 allowed for private control of farming land.<\/p>\n
The result has been dramatic improvement in output. But the
\ninfluential, the wealthy and the connected reap a large share of
\nthe benefits. In mandarin Quan Man's former fiefdom of Dong Hung,
\nfarmhands clad in baggy pants and straw conical hats work the
\nfields much as they have for centuries.<\/p>\n
"If corruption and tax levies become major burdens on
\nvillagers and poverty deepens, the Communist Party will be in
\nserious trouble," said Kerkvliet, a Vietnam scholar and expert on
\nagrarian reform. "I think the party knows this and is trying to
\naddress the problems."<\/p>\n
Dong Hung's province, Thanh Hoa, was wracked with rural unrest
\nuntil 1992. Local officials were accused of embezzling village
\ntax receipts, financing private construction projects and
\nignoring community grievances.<\/p>\n
"The leaders still somehow feel repentant about the losses
\nwhich could never be recovered, namely the people's trust in the
\nparty committee and the administration," the state-controlled
\nPeople's Army newspaper said in a recent editorial.<\/p>\n
Cracking down on both village protesters and local officials,
\nthe central government in Hanoi quelled the unrest with a
\ndelicate balance of force and reform.<\/p>\n
Money was allocated to help the province expand its industry
\nfrom agrarian to include food processing and limestone polishing.
\nBut while protests are in check, party officials concede the
\nroots of discontent still simmer in Thanh Hoa.<\/p>\n
"It's natural to have economic growth hand-in-hand with the
\ndevelopment of social vices," said Dong Hung's district chief, Le
\nDinh Bang.<\/p>\n
Villagers now working in limestone cutting and processing
\nshops make 516,000 dong (US$43) a month -- five times what the
\nvast majority of farmhands make.<\/p>\n
With rice yields soaring and Vietnam now the world's second
\nlargest rice exporter, the people who plant, pick and thresh the
\ncrops by hand make little more than 1.8 million dong ($150) to 3
\nmillion dong ($250) a year. Their urban counterparts in Hanoi and
\nHo Chi Minh City earn on average between 8.4 million dong ($700)
\nand 18 million dong ($1,500).<\/p>\n
According to a recent study, 57 percent of rural Vietnamese
\nlive below the World Bank's poverty line.<\/p>\n
In southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta region, more than 83,000
\nfarming households are landless, the Vietnam Farmers Association
\nsays.<\/p>\n
The Communist Party's leader, Secretary-General Do Muoi, has
\ntaken to touring the country's rural and poorest provinces,
\ntrying to rally support and above all patience.<\/p>\n
"It is the people who push the boat -- and it is also the
\npeople who can overturn the boat," Muoi recently told farmers in
\nnorthern Vietnam.<\/p>\n
The poor who benefited from early land reforms are now
\nsuffering under the Communist Party's change of policy and its
\ncontemporary program of economic reform called "doi moi."<\/p>\n
"When they talk about doi moi, the countryside hasn't seen
\nmuch change," said a farmer who left his tiny land holding in
\nThai Binh province to find work in Hanoi. Fearing reprisals from
\nthe government, he gave only his given name, Duc.<\/p>\n
There has been modest change: One-room, thatched-roof houses
\nin the countryside now are made of brick. Diet has improved,
\nthough not for all. At least 45 percent of Vietnamese children
\nyounger than five are malnourished, the World Bank says.<\/p>\n
The life of a peasant or farmer in Vietnam is still one of
\nsubsistence.<\/p>\n
"The farmers and people who work in the fields have been
\nforgotten in the drive to modernize the country," Duc said.<\/p>\n
In Thanh Hoa province during the early 1990s and now in Thai
\nBinh, protests fueled by disparity and corruption spread like the
\nearly communist rumblings against French colonial rule.<\/p>\n
What began as peaceful protests, strikes and petitions against
\nthe local government, quickly escalated into violence.<\/p>\n
Arson, brick-throwing and near riots in Thai Binh have been
\ncautiously disclosed recently by state-controlled news media. In
\none incident this summer, farmers in Quynh My village attacked a
\npolice station, wounding eight police officers.<\/p>\n
But while official histories praise uprisings against the
\nFrench, today's protesters in Thai Binh have been portrayed in
\nstate media as "bad elements who abuse the situation and excite
\nthe people."<\/p>",
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