Thunder from the Highlands
Ethnic unrest in Vietnam's central highlands may
trigger tighter controls and a tense leadership
struggle centred on the Communist Party chief
HANOI - The central nervous system of
Vietnam's body politic suffered a profound shock in
early February. Nothing had prepared the Hanoi
leadership for an ethnic-minority uprising in the central
highlands, where an estimated 5,000 protesters turned
out to clamour for the return of ancestral lands, among
other demands. While those numbers are paltry by
Indonesian or Philippine standards, the protests
exposed an embarrassing hole in the security apparatus,
which was bolstered by Communist Party
Secretary-General Le Kha Phieu and his allies in the
armed forces.
Phieu and military leaders appear bent on using the
worst unrest in years as a springboard to reassert the
dominance of political conservatives in the name of
national stability and unity. Some analysts predict a
tightening of controls, including further restrictions on
local and foreign media and stricter surveillance of
foreign-funded development projects. Party suspicions
that foreign intervention led to the unrest heighten a
xenophobic mood, say party insiders.
"This certainly strengthens the role of the army," says a
high-ranking party member. "The leadership is linking all
these events with some 'hostile forces.' There are
indications that they will use this as a pretext to increase
repression."
"This is not good for the reformers," says a Vietnamese
publisher. "With peace, you can change very quickly.
But when something like this happens, it's harmful for
the democratization of Vietnam."
With the Communist Party Central Committee this
week immersed in negotiations over who will lead for
the next five years, the protests could hardly have come
at a more critical time. In late October, senior party
advisers criticized Phieu for weak leadership. Some
now believe that the highlands unrest could be used as
"another arrow against him," as one diplomat put it.
Alternatively, however, Phieu's firm response could
rally conservative support within the central committee
and revive his bid to hang on to his job.
Ironically, the ethnic troubles could boost the prospects
of National Assembly Chairman Nong Duc Manh
moving to a more prominent role, even the presidency.
Manh, a northern ethnic Tay and deft politician broadly
popular from televised assembly sessions, is perceived
by many party members as a "unifying factor" for the
nation.
The highlands unrest highlighted the party's trust in
Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, a former
deputy minister of public security. By choosing him to
spearhead damage control in the highlands, party
leaders strengthened a widespread view that Dung is
the front runner to replace Phan Van Khai as prime
minister after the Ninth Party Congress, tentatively
scheduled for late March.
Dung was dispatched to the highlands after panicked
provincial leaders in Daklak and Gia Lai provinces
were overwhelmed by thousands of Ede, Giarai and
other ethnic-minority protesters who took to the streets
on February 2-6. The demonstrators were fed up with
northern migrants--from both the Kinh majority and
other ethnic minorities--encroaching on their land and
culture, some sources in the provinces and Hanoi say.
By some accounts, the protesters asked for political
autonomy, freedom to practise their Protestant faith and
the return of ancestral lands confiscated for coffee
plantations. It took a battery of troops, riot police and
water cannon to disperse the crowds, mostly
concentrated in Pleiku, Gia Lai's provincial capital.
Protests hit all the hot button
But extinguishing the sparks elsewhere wasn't so easy.
"The demonstrators changed strategy," says one source
in Daklak. "They focused on the districts and
communes, which are more difficult to control." Such
tactics prompted the military to mount a more sustained
campaign in the countryside to prevent embittered
minorities from overthrowing village-level authorities,
the sources say. Provincial party leaders elsewhere
were warned to keep close watch on minority
movements, lest the unrest spread. The politburo held a
special session on February 10 to review the events.
While rising tensions over land are well-documented,
the precise catalyst for the unrest--and more important,
the chief organizing force behind them--is shrouded in
mystery. Fears of increased migration spread in late
January with word that 100,000 people are slated for
resettlement in Daklak and Gia Lai because of the $3
billion Son La hydropower project, according to a
source connected with it. The government maintains
that the protests flared after two minority
representatives were briefly detained. All in all, 20
people were arrested. No deaths were reported but
state-run media said some police were injured and
hospitalized.
Not surprisingly, the government barred foreign
journalists from visiting the area. Phone contact was
also severely curtailed, since the politburo instructed
provincial leaders to prevent local officials, local
journalists and members of local organizations from
talking to the foreign press.
What's clear is that the demonstrators managed to push
all of Vietnam's hot buttons simultaneously: land rights,
ethnic-minority status, religious freedom and political
autonomy. That simultaneous barrage renders this
episode profoundly more threatening to the regime than
a series of protests in Thai Binh province in 1997. In
that case, several thousand farmers from the Kinh
group took to the streets to rail against embezzlement
and other misconduct by local officials. Senior party
officials went to the area to listen to the farmers and
address grievances. Some corrupt officials were later
punished.
While that conflict didn't have international
repercussions, the highlands mess quickly aroused
international passions, played across Internet sites run
by United States-based émigré groups. It was bad
enough that the protests occurred shortly before the
party congress, but even worse in the run-up to a
February 13 hearing in Washington by the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Publicly, both Vietnamese and U.S. officials vowed that
the episode would not derail the planned ratification of
the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement. But on
both sides, apprehension over religious controversy
lingers.
"If NTR [normal trade relations] were denied on
human-rights/religious-freedom grounds, this would
create a self-fulfilling prophecy for party ideologues,"
Vietnam scholar Carlyle Thayer told the hearing. "They
would see it as a vindication of their oft-repeated
warnings about the 'threat of peaceful evolution' under
which hostile external forces collude with dissenters
inside Vietnam to bring down the communist regime."
Back in Hanoi, Communist Party leaders fume that
some of those arrested were, according to foreign
media reports quoting local officials, former leaders of
the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed
Races, or Fulro, a hill-tribe guerilla group that
supported the Americans during the Vietnam War.
Government spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh told
reporters on February 15 that Fulro no longer exists.
But party insiders say the leadership is perturbed by
rumours that former guerrillas got U.S. funds to pay
demonstrators.
A U.S. embassy spokesman in Hanoi told the
Review: "The U.S. government is not funding,
supporting or encouraging any violent, anti-government
activities in Vietnam."
Despite the new chill, some aid workers still hope the
unrest will spur the government to allow minorities a
greater role in planning their own futures. "If there's a
move to understand the underlying forces, it can be
something positive," says a development worker. As
the government saw in Thai Binh back in 1997,
dialogue works better than silence.
By Margot Cohen - The Far Eastern Economic Review - February 22, 2001.
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