NEWS ANALYSIS, DECEMBER 8, 2001.

1. According to news reports from Hanoi last week, Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung, top leader of the Vietnam Catholic Church and 46 priests from Catholic parishes in Hanoi Diocese and its vicinity have signed a letter to the Communist authorities, demanding that the confiscated church property be returned to the diocese. After the 1954 Geneva Agreement, the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) carried out its land reform which included measures to confiscate the greater part of land property legally belonged to the Catholic dioceses and parishes. After a long and persistent struggle to get back the property, the church action last week was officially making the case public for the first time.

The dispute is over the plot of land of thousands of square meters, a 100-meter city block on a major street beside the Hanoi Cathedral. Recently, Hanoi authorities started a project of building at this site a recreational and cultural complex, the principal construction of which would be a dancing night club, located at 42 Nha Chung Street, Hanoi Downtown.

The motivation to protest is clear. Every religious institution must have some property to support its operation. Moreover, no church, temple, pagoda or mosque could stand loud noises especially dancing music or sound from public address system that would drown out sacred prayers.

The late Cardinal Trinh Nhu Khue, the first cardinal of Vietnam, had been adamant in demanding Hanoi authorities to restorer the church ownership on its properties legally acquired in 1933 before he could have agreed to meet with North Vietnam Communist Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. In 20 years from 1955 to 1975, at least 10 times Pham Van Dong invited Rev. Khue to meet with him, but all the invitations were declined with the same reason.

The piece of land has a value of several million dollars, so attractive to the city government. On December 6, a delegation of top officials of the city government met with the Cardinal and many priests for a solution. But the church refused to give in under any pressure. Construction at the site however, has discontinued since.

At the same time, a group of 20 middle-aged and elderly women from many provinces in South Vietnam participated in a peaceful demonstration near the Ba Dinh Hall where the Communist National Assembly was in the last session of the year. The women raised placards and conic hats on which are slogans demanding the top authorities to grant them redress of land disputes.

Some of them were evicted from their legal homesteads by local authorities without acceptable reasons. Some having land confiscated by local officials and paid for with little money. The officials then resold them at prices several hundred times higher. Some even were beaten by village cops when they strongly objected to the extortion.

There is no crackdown on the women but Nguyen Tan Dung, Deputy Prime Minister, said at the National Assembly that the protesters have gone too far and broken the law. He stated that it was excessive when protesters went into the leaders' houses, even sitting on the leaders cars to stop them to submit complaining letters and petitions. He admitted that some women even tore pieces of the policemen's clothing. More than 600 persons were protesting in Hanoi this year, he said.

The Communist regime in Vietnam still clings to Marxist doctrine concerning land ownership. Under Communist theory, the state is the unique legal owner of all land in the nation. The citizens are granted only usufruct, i.e. the right to cultivate the allocated farming land, and the right to live in homes built on the homesteads. Most people are not content with the policy, asking the Communist regime to re-establish the traditional land ownership system and ownership certificates, instead of issuing land usufruct certificates, or "red certificates," so-called because the certificate red cover.

The land policy of the Communist government has bolstered power abuses at village and district levels that have led to thousands of arbitrary redistribution of land in South Vietnam after April 30, 1975, especially in the Mekong Delta. In many cases, Communist cadres claimed the best productive pieces of farming land.

They also exerted their power to expropriate legal private homes of common people for their own, particularly private properties of those who had served as civil servants or in the military under the former nationalist regime. Thousands of families were evicted at one-hour's notice - even 5-minute's in some places - without any other place to go to, by Communist cadres who were later given official certificates of the rights to the land and homes.

Waves of disputes against the land extortion burst out in the mid-1980 continue but many cases have not been resolved. Since 1986, many complaints have been posted on some state-controlled newspapers. But it seemed that only cases not concealable were published.

The current protests in Hanoi could be an introduction to a larger campaign for religious freedom and over land ownership. But sources from Saigon warn that if protesters are going down the streets for public demonstrations, they would be facing high risk from crackdowns by special police units for rapid deployment newly created in Saigon. The units are equipped with special weapons including electronic stunning devices, rapid fire submachine guns... and other means, ready to suppress demonstrations.

2. Though Hanoi President Tran Duc Luong has signed approval for the Bilateral Trade Agreement between Hanoi and Washington on November 25, the VCP and its goverment are still harboring considerable suspicion over its outcome. They are afraid of the pending bill of Human Rights in Vietnam HR-2833, now awaiting for final decision of the U.S. Senate.

Before the BTA was finally approved by President Bush and the Human Rights Bill was held at the Senate, Hanoi was staging hundreds of protests by non-government, party-controlled organizations. Members of the Fatherland Front, cultural groups, trade leagues, labor unions, large state-owned enterprises were required to sign letters protesting the bill. Many private firms received forms with text and names of all of their personnel already printed. Local Public Security Departments ordered them to sign and to send the paper to the American Embassy.

However, the VCP leaders' great concerns are on their government capability to implement the BTA for the best interests of the country - and above all, of the party. Reports on the current session at the National Assembly proved that allegation.

Many deputies frankly asserted that the administrative reform, the key to success of general economic reform, is too slow. A deputy even said that there was no progress at all. Minister Do Quang Trung, in charge of Organization and Personnel admitted the criticism, saying that the failures emanated from the lack of discipline, bureaucracy, and corruption...

The deputies also raised concerns about the quality of general education. They argued about too many colleges have been permitted, a number of them are short of professors, even insufficient equipment for laboratory tasks. One of the big problems is about the number of unemployed graduates that amounts to many thousands every year. In 2001, there are more than a million college students but the country is still short of qualified personnel in various economic and service sectors. Besides, the policy of discrimination against family political background in employment aggravates the shortage of skilled technical workforce.

The government is saying that 15 percent of national budget is devoted for education, but the figure is not trustworthy. There is a shortage of more than 100,000 teachers and many schools in the countryside are nothing but makeshift huts with thatch roofs and walls.

Economic reform requires a large number of well trained technicians, experts and mangers who could be trained by a good and well-planned system of education. Not dictatorship and Marxist-oriented teachings.

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