Ðằng
Vân
Point of View
Week Ending 17 December 2006
About-face on administrative detention:
interesting times
ahead
Barely a week after the APEC
summit in
Hanoi (17-19 November 06), opposition groups overseas heard reports
from
dissidents inside Vietnam that somehow state security men who usually
kept
watch on them 24 hours per day mysteriously disappeared into thin air.
It was
generally assumed that the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) must have
learned
from the APEC experience and changed tactics on political repression.
From now
on they would severely repress new dissidents who were not yet known to
the
international community, but leave veteran dissidents relatively free
to
assuage international critics.
However, the CPV’s intention is
much
clearer on 14 December 2006,
when a government-owned website Vietnamnet published an article by Ha
Yen
entitled “Discontinuing Administrative Detention of Violations of State
Security”.
Ha Yen’s article states, among
others, the
Permanent Commission of the Congress today (14 December) was unanimous
on a
Decree to abolish, amend some provisions of the Decree on
Administrative
Detention Measures of 2002. Accordingly the subject of this new decree
before
it takes effect shall be exempt from detention for the balance of the
time
under detention, effective from 1 January 2007.
The article also outlines the
official
reasons by the minister for Justice Uong Chu Luu for such a move:
- The current
criminal codes already have adequate provisions to deal with crimes
such as betrayal of the fatherland, spying, activities to overthrow the
government, sabotaging national solidarity, violations of territorial
security, terrorism, anti-government propaganda …In the era of world
integration and in the context of present day Vietnam, the government
should take a page from other nations, prosecute these crimes at court
so that defendants could avail themselves of the right to defend these
allegations.
- More to the point,
the minister said that these detention measures were generally harmful
to the government and counter-productive. Dissidents under detention
were usually intellectuals and the local police found it difficult to
educate. Local governments were generally embarrassed, reactive and
ineffective leading to dissidents losing respect for the government.
Instead of repenting their crime, they became more entrenched in their
opposition.
But the real motivation behind
such a move
by the CPV is more realistic:
- In the aftermath of
its admission to WTO there is much more international pressure on the
CPV to make its legal system more transparent and equitable. Vietnam is
a much smaller nation than Communist China and as a result is more
susceptible to such pressure.
- The second factor
is the stark reality that the national security apparatus is so
alienated after more than 30 years of bribery, corruption, graft and
total moral collapse that they have lost their faith, conviction and
are now simply unable to enforce the will of an impotent totalitarian
regime. To coin a well-known phraseology, for the CPV leadership, it is
purely a case of “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. They
dearly want to suppress and snuff the life out of all dissidents, but
their policemen can no longer sum up the muscle to be effective
enforcers. Extreme proximity to the people to control them is a
necessary condition of work of these security officers. It, together
with a pervading culture of bribery, has demoralized the entire
apparatus. The Army, whose barracks are more remote from the people
might do a better job at brutal repression. But the Security machine
may have treated the army with such contempt within the party that the
later may not necessarily take the side of the CPV in a final show-down
between the party and the people. Wherefore the CPV dilemma.
When a totalitarian regime can
no longer
command its machinery of repression effectively, the beginning of its
end is
near.
CPV leaders are certainly
living in
interesting times in Vietnam.
Ðằng Vân
18 December 2006