Vietnam's Failed Revolution . . .
By Le Van Tien. Mr. Tien is a Vietnamese journalist currently living in
Alexandria, Virginia. Born in 1923, he was a prisoner of conscience under
the French colonial government, under the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, and
for 14 years under the Communist regime. In 1993, while still in prison, he
received the Human Rights Watch Free Expression Award.
We are marching to Saigon.
We are entering the city.
We are liberating the South.
This was the song I heard the National Liberation Front soldiers singing as
they marched behind the North Vietnamese tanks that rolled into Saigon on
April 30, 1975. Later the lyrics were taught to children, who sang them
enthusiastically enough. Say what you will about the Communists, they have
always understood that children love parades.
In the years just after the unification of Vietnam, even as many South
Vietnamese were either fleeing in boats or being sent to prison or
"re-education," others -- particularly young people -- were willing to join
the Communists in efforts to rebuild the country. Many were even willing to
fight and die in the wars against Cambodia and China.
Yet 25 years later most of the survivors can barely remember the songs they
used to sing about the revolution. For those of us who were imprisoned or
forced into exile, it is tempting to judge the revolution by our own
standards. It is more instructive, however, to judge a movement by the
extent to which it has met its own goals. Life in Vietnam has indeed changed
in many ways since 1975, but not in any of the ways promised by the
revolution.
Vietnam was never a rich country, but now it is one of the poorest in the
world, with a per capita GDP of about $300. Teachers make $20 per month,
construction workers about $30, medical doctors $35. Of the 37 million
working-age Vietnamese, only 7 million have stable jobs, almost all in
government or in state-owned enterprises. The remaining 30 million are
seasonal workers employed for 200 days or less per year.
Almost everyone in Vietnam is struggling for survival day by day, and almost
everyone blames the government -- especially corruption in government. It is
no accident that people in rural areas are the poorest of all (according to
the World Bank, about 45% of Vietnamese farmers live below the poverty line)
because these are the areas where government is most corrupt and has the
greatest power over people's lives.
Despite the harsh measures taken by the Vietnamese government against those
who openly express their displeasure with government policies, there have
been periodic demonstrations and even uprisings among rural people
protesting corruption and oppression.
In 1989, several hundred people from villages in the Mekong Delta traveled
to Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, to demand improved conditions in the
countryside. These demonstrations were partly motivated by resentment at
continued North Vietnamese domination of the South, but in the early 1990s
there were riots in three provinces in Central Vietnam, in an area known as
"the cradle of the revolution."
These events culminated in 1997 in Thai Binh, a northern province noted for
the unusually high percentage of enthusiastic Communists among its people,
in which thousands of peasants and farmers detained armed public security
officers and demanded an end to confiscatory taxes, corruption, and other
official abuses. Even a group of high-ranking Army officers from Thai Binh
openly announced that "the Communist party has succeeded in abolishing the
old regime in which man exploited man, only to replace it with a regime in
which the Party itself exploits the people." Many of the Thai Binh
demonstrators were sent to prison or re-education, but the government also
dismissed about 50 officials including the head of the provincial People's
Committee.
The poor living conditions of the farmers and the working class contrast
sharply with the lifestyle of many Communist cadres, government officials,
and executives in state-owned enterprises. They can afford conspicuous
consumption not because of their salaries, but because of their far larger
income from official corruption. In recent years, the government itself has
recognized that corruption is at the heart of its problems, strangling the
economy and scaring away foreign investors.
In mid-1999 General Secretary Le Kha Phieu announced a two-year campaign of
"self-criticism." The campaign is intended to end bribery, extortion,
smuggling, and other corrupt practices, in order to win the confidence of
the people and also of foreign investors. These investors were initially
attracted by the official policies of economic "renovation" and "openness"
announced in the early 1990s, but they have been discouraged not only by the
burdens of corruption and hyperregulation, but also by the consequent
decline in economic growth rates from about 8% annually to just over 4%.
Most ominously, many are frightened by the prospect of political instability
as a consequence of the steady erosion of the government's legitimacy.
The Vietnamese government seems to understand that it is in danger of losing
its grip on power. It has been quietly advised by scholars, international
financial institutions and representatives of other governments that it must
act to regain the trust of the Vietnamese people. The most obvious way to do
this would be through a campaign of renovation and openness extending beyond
the economic sphere to include freedom of expression, religion, and the
press as well as steps toward more representative government.
Party leaders, however, regard these freedoms as an even greater threat to
their power than the current popular dissatisfaction with government. In
August 1999, at the closing session of the Seventh Communist Party Plenum,
General Secretary Le Kha Phieu stated that "there will be no sharing of
power. The Communists will hold firmly to leadership. Any request for
democracy, freedom, human rights, or 'peaceful evolution,' is a conspiracy
by the enemy forces to erase the socialist regime in Vietnam."
This injunction has manifested itself in strong measures by local
authorities throughout the country against actions suspected to be harmful
to internal stability and order. Most recently, a number of Hoa Hao
Buddhists were imprisoned for participating in a ceremony to commemorate the
53rd anniversary of the disappearance of their founder.
Father Chan Tin, an outspoken Roman Catholic priest and human rights
advocate, was recently "tried" in absentia at public meeting organized by
the People's Committee in the district where his church is located. Father
Tin was charged with such crimes as "seeking to abolish the leadership of
the Communist Party" and "destroying the solidarity between religions and
the state." And the principal leaders of the Unified Buddhist Church of
Vietnam, the country's largest religious denomination, remain under virtual
house arrest.
The government also recently arrested, searched, and deported French
reporter Sylvaine Pasquier, who was apprehended outside the house of former
political prisoner Nguyen Dan Que, whom she was attempting to interview. Ms.
Pasquier reports that at one point her interrogator made a gesture to
simulate a gun at her head and said he could put heroin in her purse and
condemn her as a drug smuggler.
Next month Mr. Phieu will make an official visit to France at the invitation
of President Chirac -- the first visit to a democratic country by a General
Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party since Ho Chi Minh visited France
in 1946. The Phieu visit was arranged with the help of the French Communist
Party, which recently announced its determination to "rejuvenate the spirit
of communism" as a movement committed to "return political power to the
individual citizen."
Perhaps Mr. Phieu and his colleagues in the Vietnamese Communist Party will
come to share the insight of their French comrades that Communism can only
survive by finding a way to coexist with democracy and individual freedom.
If not -- if they keep trying to cure the consequences of Stalinism with
more Stalinism -- it is hard to imagine that anyone will be singing songs
about the revolution in another 25 years.
Link: https://lists.lsit.ucsb.edu/archives/gordon...ril/001540.html
Good solution.
