Vietnam's
Dong Tam Incident: the Curtain Falls And not in a good way
David
Brown
September 14, 2020
The verdicts have been
handed down in the Dong Tam Incident, a brief but bloody clash between police
and a persistently oppositional band of Vietnamese farmers. After a week of
testimony, cross-examination, apologies, and pleas for clemency, on September 14
the Hanoi City People's Court found all 29 defendants guilty in various ways of
resisting state authority. Two have been sentenced to death, another to life
imprisonment, and the rest to lesser terms.
The guilty verdict was no
surprise. This was a show trial ordained and orchestrated by the institutions
of the Vietnamese state. Prisoner after prisoner uttered virtually
identical confessions: "I apologize to the families of the police officers
who were lost; I thank our teachers in the prison who taught us how we erred; I
thank my lawyers but now no longer need his services; and finally, I ask for a
lighter sentence."
The regime in Hanoi takes
a dim view of the agrarian protests. In party doctrine and Vietnamese law, the
land belongs to the people and the state manages it on their behalf. If farmers
persist in asserting their right to till plots of land when the party/state has
decreed some other use for it, even if they only insist on being paid what it
is worth, they risk being labeled "rioters and terrorists," forcibly
removed, and in exemplary cases, prosecuted.
According to The 88
Project, a blog that covers free speech issues in Vietnam, the Ministry of
Information directed state-licensed media to paint defendants as “first
attackers,” describe their leader as “a degenerate party member,” stress that
“most people agree the police had to act to protect the peace,” and not to
report "defense arguments detrimental to the government’s case.”
A “documentary” film
produced by the Ministry of Public Security was shown at the beginning of the
trial that illustrated the government’s version of events and included footage
of defendants admitting guilt. When defense lawyers objected and asserted that
their clients confessed under duress, they were told to “Just watch it.” The
defense lawyers were also denied the opportunity to talk to the defendants
while the court was in recess
The events at Dong Tam,
an ancient village on the western edge of the Red River's fertile delta,
unfolded with the inevitability of a Shakespearian tragedy.
Act I: 40 years ago, the
state decreed that 208 hectares of land would be expropriated for the use of
the air force, but, as it turned out and for reasons still unexplained, some 47
of those hectares were not, in fact, incorporated into the new Mieu Mon Air
Base. It was good agricultural land, and, as they'd done for centuries,
residents of nearby Dong Tam Village continued to farm it.
Act II: 35 years or so
later, the Ministry of Defense assigned those 47 hectares to Viettel, a
high-tech communications corporation wholly owned by the ministry. The farmers
erected signs proclaiming their right to refuse eviction, and camped out on the
fields. One thing led to another. On April 15, 2017, the farmers' leader,
Le Dinh Kinh, a former village chief, and some others were arrested. The
farmers reacted by invading the village office to take 38 officials and
policemen hostage, a bold stroke that gained them a national audience on social
media.
Act III: A surprising
turn of events relieved this excruciatingly tense situation a few days later.
With a promise that the villagers' claim to the disputed land would be
comprehensively reviewed and no one punished, the mayor of Hanoi, a former
police general, secured a general release of prisoners.
Act IV: There was,
however, no happy ending: in April 2019, central government inspectors
announced their verdict: the villagers had no valid claim to the land or to
monetary compensation. Not long afterward, Defense Ministry contractors began
building a wall around the disputed tract and, it seems, Kinh's extended family
and friends began to assemble a small armory including spears, improvised hand
grenades, and gasoline bombs.
Act V: In the wee hours
of January 9, news
of a deadly fight lit up Vietnamese social media. Four were dead:
three police officers reportedly incinerated after falling (or, alternately,
being pushed) into an air shaft, and the 87-year-old Kinh killed, allegedly
with grenade in hand while resisting arrest. Twenty-six others -- members
of Kinh's extended family and other followers -- were under arrest. On national
television, Kinh's son and grandson confessed to killing the police officers.
In the days that
followed, the three officers were proclaimed heroic martyrs and given an
elaborate funeral. Though the official version of the deadly events was several
times revised as lay analysts picked apart its details, enough survived to
craft the state's narrative of an attack on law enforcement officers by the
farmers.
It's argued that the Dong
Tam incident may induce higher authority to supervise local officials and
police tactics more closely. That's not likely. At least from the time of the
hostage-taking crisis, deciding what happened next at Dong Tam could not have
been left to lower levels. Ministry of Public Security proposals to meet
intractable defiance with overwhelming and deadly force were almost certainly
endorsed by the highest level of the ruling Party. And then, when the
operation miscarried leaving three officers dead, Vietnam's top management
concurred in covering up police blunders and, however threadbare their story,
in proceeding with a show trial.
Coda
Almost as long as there
have been farmers, there have been peasant rebellions (Wikipedia
has a long list of these) and almost always they have been brutally
suppressed.
In Vietnam, the Tay Son
rebellion (1769-88) did succeed for a while. Along with various short-lived
agrarian revolts against the French colonial enterprise in the first half of
the 20th century, it is celebrated in the nation's high school history books.
In present-day Vietnam,
protests against injustice by farmers are a familiar story. Le Dinh Kinh seems
to have persuaded himself, his sons, his friends, and neighbors that justice,
if not the letter of the law, was on their side, with tragic consequences.
Someday, Kinh and others
like him may also be commemorated.
-----------------
David
Brown is a retired US diplomat with extensive
experience in Vietnam. He is a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel.
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