Thayer Vietnam Dissidents On Trial

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Background Briefing: Vietnam: Trials on Grounds of National Security Carlyle A. Thayer August 20, 2009

[client name deleted] Question: With reference to the VTV [Vietnam Television] broadcast Wednesday night [19 August], and the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) report in all newspapers today [20 August] that about 27 people were arrested for their involvement in national security cases: Any idea if this is an intensification of the campaign against dissent, or just fanfare on the August Revolution anniversary? ANSWER: VNA reported on the impending trial of 27 persons. They were arrested in two separate waves, the first dating to September 2008 and the second in May-June this year. Generally these individuals have been charged under Article 88 of the Penal Code which criminalizes ‘conducting propaganda against the socialist state’. They could also be charged under Article 87 for ‘undermining national unity’. But so far they have not been charged with the more serious offenses of ‘carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the People’s Government’ (Article 79) and/or espionage (Article 80). Since the elevation of To Huy Rua to the Politburo early last year, there has been a noticeable sharpening of official media handling of cases involving political dissidents. Rua heads the party Central Committee’s Information and Training Commission and works closely on ideological matters with the Chinese Communist Party. An analysis I wrote in January 2008 stated that ‘Rua’s elevation will mean a tightening of the ideological clamps on Vietnamese intelligentsia including intellectuals, academics, journalists and computer savvy youth’. This is now apparent. Vietnam is attempting to turn the tables on criticism of its human rights and religious freedom practices by asserting Vietnamese legal sovereignty. This was first evident when Father Nguyen Van Ly was put on trial in 2007 and the proceedings were broadcast by video link to foreign observers. The message was that Vietnam had nothing to hide and Father Ly was guilty of criminal not political offenses. Not only are all acts of political and religious dissent characterized as illegal, but recently in high-profile cases the state media has charged dissidents with seeking to overthrow the state or with being terrorists. The state-controlled media uses such emotive language as ‘hostile forces’, ‘reactionaries’, and ‘subverting the regime’. But the state media has not been able to substantiate charges that any of the 27 political detainees planned or plotted to use violent means. State media accounts reveal that Vietnam’s constitutional and international legal obligations to guarantee freedom of speech and assembly are not observed. When details of the allegations made by the state media are examined closely, they reveal that the defendants met with each other, discussed political topics, wrote articles on the Internet, provided their views on blog sites and gave interviews to foreign media. The state media has catalogued literally hundreds of articles, blogs, interviews, poems etc. but has not been able to quote a single one that advocates the violent overthrow of Vietnam’s communist one-party state.

2 The state media has also given prominence to contact between those arrested and foreigners, mainly overseas Vietnamese. Further, the press has reported a few instances in which money has been transferred to Vietnam. But the media has been unable to make a link between foreign contacts and funding and weapons, explosives etc. Indeed, the press reports reveal that funds were used to purchase computers and mobile phones. The state media uses the label ‘reactionary’ to describe overseas organizations such as the Vietnam Democratic Party. In fact a party by that name had a legal existence in Vietnam for many decades and along with the Vietnam Socialist Party was represented in the National Assembly. After reunification both parties dissolved themselves claiming their historical mission was complete. The present Vietnam Democratic Party is a conscious attempt to promote political pluralism that was once countenanced by the communist regime. No evidence has been produced that the VDP promotes violence. The Viet Tan has been labeled ‘terrorist’. Its antecedents not only advocated the violent overthrow of the communist regime but sent in armed groups to carry out this objective. When the Viet Tan emerged after the dissolution of its predecessor, the Viet Tan explicitly rejected violence. The Viet Tan is led by a younger generation of activists who are not trying to settle old scores through armed force. Indeed, there is a hint of irony in Le Cong Dinh’s confession in which he admits making contact with members of the VDP in order to undertake a training program in non-violent protest. The same sense of irony pervades news accounts that dissidents wanted to replace the current state constitution with one of their own. A state constitution is usually the foundation for ‘rule of law’; but since the communists use the constitution to ‘rule by law’ it is understandable that they would fear a new constitution that dropped Article 4 enshrining the Vietnam Communist Party as the ‘leading force in society’. Also, it is quite revealing that the VNA report gives prominence to a book entitled From Dictatorship to Democracy which it states analyzed ‘non-violent struggles to subvert political regimes in Asia and Europe’. Finally, and perhaps more to the point, among the additional charges brought against some of those arrested is that through their writings and interviews they ‘distorted state policy’, ‘distorted the party’s leadership’, defamed the prime minister, split ‘the internal unity between the party’s elite’, and even owned books that were critical of Ho Chi Minh. In other words, political dissidents raised such sensitive issues as bauxite mining, Vietnam’s relations with China, and corruption by high-level officials. The question of Ho Chi Minh’s policies is especially irksome to party ideologues. Ho Chi Minh promoted ‘the great national unity bloc’ and united front tactics. Ho’s relatively moderate political line was overtaken by hard line party ideologues in the 1950s who saw many of their political allies as class enemies. These ideologues have no desire to allow present day political dissidents to claim Ho’s legacy as their own. The current wave of repression represents the opening of the campaign by the conservative party ideological and security blocs to shape the policies and leadership selection at the eleventh national congress scheduled for early 2011. It is not a tactical maneuver to add luster to the celebrations marking the August Revolution.