Compiled by NCVA & BPSOS
Vietnam Human Rights Bulletin, Vol I, No 2
The Van Giang “police action”
As noted above (“Vietnamreporters beaten up by riot police”), on April 24 an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 police armed with bludgeons, electric rods, and tear gas descended on Van Giang district in Hung Yen province to expropriate land from local farmers. The land will be turned over to a real estate developer, Vihajico, whose plan it is to build a high-end residential complex called EcoPark. Although the Van Giang operation started at 4:30 in the morning, some 700 farmers from the three villages of Xuan Quan, Phung Cong, and Cuu Cao who were somehow forewarned came out in strength to protest the takeover. They were badly outmatched, however, by the heavily armed police officers and by the 60 to 70 bulldozers and other vehicles that followed in their wake.
Interestingly, the tourist center to be built on land confiscated from Catholic parishioners in Con Dau,Da Nang, is also described by its government advocates as an “Ecotourism” project. It is not clear whether and in what ways these projects will benefit the environment. The Van Giang “EcoPark” was proposed by a well-connected developing group that includes a British partner, Savills. It was advertized as a “green project” offering top security and comfort not very far fromHanoi. Soon after the project was conceived in 2003, the site was visited by high-ranking officials including Nguyen Tan Dung, who is now Prime Minister. The stumbling block with this project, as with the one in Con Dau and with other similar projects, was that the farmers were asked to clear the area, leave their ancestral lands, and go elsewhere for compensation far lower than the value of the land, while the developer will resell the property at perhaps a hundred times the amount of the compensation money.
In the Van Giang case the police action generated a public outcry that has resulted in at least a temporary pause in the conflict. The farmers of three villages are back for the moment, building hedges and trying to restore their orchards and fields.
The Vu Ban, Nam Dinh, operation
On May 9, with the Van Giang operation not quite over, the authorities of Vu Ban district, Nam Dinh province, “mobilized the tools of violence, around 300 people armed with bludgeons, guns, and shepherd dogs, to pounce on the people and hit them indiscriminately. A woman was kicked in the chest, another was dragged on the ground. A 80-year old woman from Cao Phuong hamlet, Lien Bao township, was asphyxiated and had her arms pulled together behind her back. Mrs. Dat, 70, was bludgeoned and kicked with swollen face, then thrown out on Route 10 in the sun. Many others yet were beaten up by bunches of attackers. The tragic cries of the victims filled the air over the fields. As for those arrested it was not clear how they would be treated at the police stations.”
This was the description of the event by a former Vietnamese Ambassador to China, General Nguyen Trong Vinh, in an article published on May 16th in the highly popular blog site of Dr. Nguyen Xuan Dien (xuandienhannom.blogspot.com). General Vinh went on to comment:
“How can the authorities be so inhuman, unethical?
“How can the police be so cruel, beating up the people as if they were enemies?
. . . .
“Without their fields, the people become like fish without water. Unskilled, what can they do now? Suppose that they can get retrained, what enterprise would hire them at the age of 40, 50, 60?”
. . . .
“Facing them is the road to misery, an indefinite future.”
Ambassador Vinh observed that “[i]n the last three months we have witnessed three barbaric forceful land expropriation cases (Tien Lang – Hai Phong, Van Giang – Hung Yen, and Vu Ban – Nam Dinh) where the farmers have been arrested, hit and kicked indiscriminately, and expropriated. At no time have our peasantry been unjustly and shamefully treated as of now!”
