NEWS ANALYSIS, NOVEMBER 10, 2001.

According to a report published in many newspapers in Vietnam last week, there have been about 300 attacks by hurling stones at moving trains in the last 5 years, breaking 108 windows and injured 98 persons. Last year, 60 attacks were reported compared to 25 in 1996. However, actual figures might be higher, sometimes two or three times or even higher, than statistics provided by Communist authorities.

Only a number of areas where attacks often occurred are listed in the report. They are in the provinces lying from north to south along the trans-Viet railroad such as Phu Tho, Vinh Phuc, Nghe An, Thanh Hoa, Quang Binh (North Vietnam), Quang Nam, and Khanh Hoa (South Vietnam). In fact, people living in other areas, particularly the region north of Phu Tho to Lao Kai, have also been victims of the crime.

The attacks are done mostly by children and teenagers, sometimes adults are involved. They hurl stones and bricks at glass windows on any of the passenger cars and hail each other when their projectiles hit and break the glass. They enjoy the brutal game as if it were a sports competition.

The attack at railway cars for recreation exists only in Vietnam under the Communist regime long ago, probably since 1957. But few people in Vietnam and outside had ever heard of it before 1977 when related stories were published in state-controlled newspapers.

In mid-1976, tens of thousands of former military officers and public servants and politicians of the collapsed South Vietnam government were sent to prison camps over North Vietnam mountainous areas. While they were riding under armed guards on freight cars from Hai Phong to the provinces north of Hanoi, they were attacked the same way. Stones hit some prisoners and seriously injured them.

At first, they thought it had been an act of violence staged by Hanoi to frighten the South Vietnamese prisoners and to show how much the Northern people hated them.

Later, they learned from local civilians that the youngsters living along the railroads "fling stones at any passenger train," not just at them prisoners of war from South Vietnam on their ways to North Vietnam prison camps. A few months later, the story was confirmed by Hanoi newspapers that stone throwing killed one or two and injured a dozen train travellers every year in North Vietnam. The most dangerous attacks happened frequently along the railroad from Hanoi to Lao Kai, close to the common borders with China.

The reports also revealed that stone-hurling ambushes were usually laid at sites where trains reach a bend. As the trains lower speed and expose a side of the cars at the most vulnerable angles directly towards the attackers, a rain of fist-sized rocks are falling on the glass windows.

Although trains in Vietnam run at rather low speed, the impact of a child's rock supposedly 10 meter/sec against a 25 km/h or 7 meter/sec is destructive enough to get through the glass and seriously injure passengers sitting near by the windows.

The cruel assaults occurr in sparsely populated areas where railroads cross hills and fields. Authorities in central government had issued many directives urging local officials to react against the crime. But for more than 26 years they have failed to stop the attacks, only because local law enforcement agencies are reluctant to intervene. The problem got even worse when some local Public Security offices refuse to co-operate with officials from the central government to investigate the incidents and to prevent the evildoing.

The mischievous practice gradually spread into South Vietnam below the 17th Parallel a decade after this part of the country fell into the Communist hands. Before April 30, 1975 under the former nationalist regime, there hadn't been any similar act against trains or cross-country buses.

Public Security branch in the Communist regime is considered very effective in political security protection. Its departments at province and district levels react timely and successfully to nip in the bud of most subversive plots. Meanwhile, much less effort is contributed to the fight against serious social evils - drug, prostitution, robbery, corruption, fraudulence - let alone protection of public safety.

Failing to efficiently perform the tasks of political protection would bring a responsible Public Security local department much trouble. But neglect of duty to public safety would not. To many veteran educators, the deterioration of social morality is the root of all evils blooming in Vietnam today. The education system that focuses only on political training to prepare the students to become faithful party members could never made them good citizens, honest and benevolent.

Tran Bach Dang, a high ranking Communist theorist in one of his writing about the South in 1975 has confirmed that "children in the South are much more polite than kids of their age in the North."

But according to another conception, attack on the trains is only a form of sadism that could be found in a society where brutality and dishonesty are tolerated by a dictatorship because of its leaders' incapability of ruling their country and by a fanatic but inhuman ideology.

Lax morality and ethics is also the root of corruption and ill management that might be greatly harmful to economic reforms including foreign investment.

Members of the Public Security branch is considered the backbone of the Communist dictatorship and given large authority over the population. Since free-market reform was launched in the late 1980, they have been leading a dog's life with chicken-feed salaries. Consequently they have to manage everything possible to make a decent living.

Narrow circumstances urge them to accept bribes, kickbacks and dicourage them from serving as diligent law enforcers. Therefore, it's not uncommon to see Communist traffic cops standing under cool shadows of trees on street corners and ignoring what they should act on. Traffic jams lasting for hours have become daily problems all over large and medium cities. Besides, hundreds of deaths by traffic accidents are recorded each month. And by the same reason, traffic Public Security departments are unable to interdict motorbicycle races that killed and crippled many teenagers on holidays such as Christmas, New Year's Eve and Tet.

Many Vietnamese say that "There is a great freedom of movement in Vietnam today. People are free to disregard road code and jump the red light at their will."