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From Đồng Tâm incident: Experience and lesson of listening to the people
From Đồng Tâm incident: Experience and lesson of listening to the people
1/5/17
About two weeks after the Dong
Tam commune incident, in which villagers held over 30 people hostages including
police officers, local officials and some journalists. The stand-off started on
Saturday in My Duc's Dong Tam commune after police came to restore order and
stability due to land dispute in the area.
According to the law, all land
in Vietnam is ultimately the state’s ownership, people have rights of users but
must give back for the country’s infrastructure and defence projects.
Unfortunately, for times land disputes have erupted due to land users’ refusal
because of inappropriate compensation or misbehaviours of local authorities.
Land disputes have increased
as the government of Vietnam pursues its development goals, often turning over
large swathes of state-owned agricultural land to commercial interests and
national firms. However, the violent nature of the My Duc incident is rare. Despite
multiple dialogues and attempts to resolve the situation, "the situation
is escalating." However, whatever reasons were, the capture of officials
and policemen was totally wrong and violated laws. If there are mistakes or
fraud, it’s the authority’s tasks to deal with, the people should not spontaneously
act like the Dong Tam’s case.
To understand more about the
incident, let review the whole story about this land dispute in Dong Tam
commune, My Duc district.
In 1980, an area of 50.03
hectares spanning My Luong, Tran Phu and Dong Lac communes of Chuong My
district and Dong Tam commune in My Duc district was allocated to the Ministry
of Defence to build Mieu Mon airport. Since October 2014, the entire area has
been used by the Air Defence-Air Force Service as the base of Brigade
28. Under Decision 551/QD-TM dated March 27, 2015, the Ministry of Defence
recovered the land, including 46 hectares in Dong Tam commune, and allocated it
to the military-run telecommunication Viettel Group to use for the AI defence
project. Earlier, due to poor management of the local government, a number of
residents in Hoanh village, Dong Tam commune, had trespassed on the
military-managed land farming and building residential structures. When the
Ministry of Defence reclaimed the land, many of the residents lodged their
complaints on the issue to authorized district and municipal agencies.
The administrations of My Duc
commune and Hanoi have been holding dialogues and various communications
measures to settle the matter but those residents failed to strictly abide by legal
regulations related. Since late 2016, security and social order in Dong Tam
commune has been complicated mostly due to those locals’ activities to
“retrieve” the land piece, which has been confirmed by the authorized agencies
of My Duc district, Hanoi and the Ministry of Defence as military land. They
organized various activities causing disorder in the locality, especially when
the Viettel Group received the area to implement the project. Hanoi Police and
the Criminal Investigation Agency under the Ministry of Defence and other
relevant agencies have gathered documents and evidence relating to the
organized violations as these are serious, negatively affecting local security
and social order as well as normal operation of local agencies, enterprises and
schools.
On March 30, 2017, the Hanoi
Police started legal proceedings against the case on “causing public disorder”
under Article 245 of the 1999 Criminal Code while the Criminal Investigation
Agency under the Ministry of Defence launched legal proceedings for the case on
“resisting against on-duty officials” and the case on “violating regulations on
land use” in line with Article 257 and Article 173, respectively, of the Code.
The Hanoi Police Department summoned those pertaining to the cases three times
but they did not show up and continued opposing activities. On April 15, 2017,
the Hanoi police arrested four violators to serve the investigations into the
“causing public disorder” case, but their vehicles were held and damaged, and
38 city policemen and officials of My Duc were illegally apprehended. Municipal
leaders came to the locality, explained the illegal actions to the locals and
requested them to release the captured officials and police. At the same time,
the city also sent two working groups to the commune to work with the locals,
who, however, did not cooperate and even threw sand and rocks to the officials,
injuring some of them. On April 18, four citizens arrested on April 15 were
released as they showed signs of repentance.
But, claiming that the
disputes are being handled by corrupt local officials, the villagers refused to
cooperate. There were also a lot of dangerous acts carried by Hoanh’s
villagers, not only detaining police officers and threatening to kill them if
security personnel attack again. Some sources reported that the farmers said
they treated the detainees well, though some so-called activists and rights
group Defend the Defenders said that the farmers kept them in a closed room and
were prepared to “burn them with petrol” if authorities attacked the village.
Hanoi authorities have since
appealed for the hostages to be released, calling on villagers to stand on the
right side of the law. The authorities quickly took measures to rein in the
situation with priority given to rescuing the detained officers. Local
authorities also urged the residents to stay calm and cooperate and ensure the
safety of the officers. Yet Dong Tam’s people refused to cooperate and required
to talk with the Hanoi’s municipal administration. The situation fell into
stand-off for nearly a week.
In this incident, we also saw
how quickly hostile forces and reactionary elements sensed and took advantages
of it to launch anti-government campaigns. Nearly after the stand-off began,
some opportunist so-called activists like Lã Việt Dũng, Lê Mỹ Hạnh, Trịnh Bá
Phương (son of Cấn Thị Thuê, who was judged and sentenced to prison on public
disorder charges for protesting government-sanctioned evictions used to clear
the way for commercial development in Duong Noi, sending her back to prison to
serve a 20-month term imposed two months earlier.) and some opportunist lawyers
like Trần Vũ Hải recorded clips and posted comments on some websites and social
networks Facebook. Taking sand to a beach, hostile forces like BBC, CNN, VOA,
RFA, RFI, etc and many other social network accounts, inside and outside the
country, jumped in with wave of distorted and slanderous posts and articles
about the incident aiming to undermine the Vietnamese government’s image,
blaming for the State and the country’s political system and incited people to
protest all over the country.
As Ha Noi Moi newspaper
reported that “outside forces,” including lawyers and civil society workers,
were working to incite the Dong Tam farmers by posting information about the
standoff on social media “in the name of democracy”. Fortunately, Dong Tam’s
people recognized these plots and deterred them from entering the village. Not
just that, like vultures many anti-Vietnam organizations and groups such as
Viet Tan also tried to exploit the incident to conduct their wicked schemes and
steered it into false direction against the Vietnamese State’s policies.
To diffuse the heat and
protect the hostages’ lives, also respecting the people’s rights and interests,
the Chairman of Hanoi’s people committee Nguyen Duc Chung quickly responded to
meet Dong Tam’s people and held an open-minded talk with them. At the meeting,
Chung listened to the people’s aspirations and requirements and made pledges to
launch a fair investigation about the management and use of land in My Duc
District’s Dong Tam Commune and guarantee the people’s rights. With these
tolerant and appropriate approaches, the Hanoi’s authority has settled the case
smoothly and properly which has reassured the whole country. The residents were
satisfied and freed all of the remaining hostages. Now, let the authorities do
their jobs.
After this incident, it’s believed that the
government and all local authorities in the country would have more experience
in managing and serving the people, especially in land clearance. To people, we
should be aware of fake news and distorted and slanderous information from
toxic websites and sources. Do not let hostile forces and reactionary elements
deceive and take to wrong activities against the State./.
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All comments [ 4 ]
People should keep calm and believe in the government. Don't let hostile forces abuse to participate in bad activities.
This issue has been settled in a reasonable and tolerant manner of the government for listening to the people.
Seeing many hostile elements would want to exaggerate the incident to a so-called revolution, people should be aware of their plots of causing chaos and disability.
Hostile vurtures! But it must admit that there is some mistakes of local authorities have caused the people's frustration. The government must manage and stop that.
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