Anh-Susann Pham Thi. Twitter. Fair use.
Vietnamese scholars, activists
and lawyers are increasingly charged with “subversion” or conducting “anti-state
propaganda” or “aiming
to overthrow the state” under the provisions of the Articles 79 and 88 of
the penal
code. In 2015, the Vietnamese National Assembly revised its penal code
which now includes a penalty of up to 20 years and the death sentence for the aforementioned
activities. According to the numbers provided by Amnesty
International, almost 100
prisoners of conscience, bloggers, and activists alike face continuous
harassment, physical attacks, interrogation and surveillance both inside and
outside prisons. In order to find ways of expressing their discontent,
activists are obliged to find alternative, or rather covert, forms of
resistance. Some of these strategies and tactics are explained in the
following.
Many Vietnamese dissident groups
embrace ideologically charged strategies (i.e. anti-Communism, nationalism, religious
motivations, reactionary Communism “red flags” etc.) which the Vietnamese state
fears will become a threat, impinging on the current Communist Party’s
authority over the population.
Among the most outspoken dissident
groups in Vietnam are democracy and human rights movements, such as the “8406 bloc” that was founded in
April 2006 with 118 members including religious leaders, scholars and doctors,
but also retired military officers. While a number of activists dispute the
continuous economic dependency
on China (e.g. nationwide demonstrations against Special
Economic Zones in June 2018), and the lack of freedom of expression (e.g. protests
against the new draft
law on cybersecurity ), democracy
and politico-civil rights more broadly, others demand specific land rights,
improvement of labour conditions (e.g. wildcat
strikes in factories), minority rights (e.g. LGBTQ
Movement) and the protection of their local
environment (e.g. Anti-Formosa
protests in 2016).
Anh-Susann Pham Thi. Twitter. Fair use. But it has become increasingly
difficult to express public discontent. How difficult is shown in the numbers
and lengthy reports provided by Human
Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty
International and Freedom House
among others. According to Reporters
Without Borders, for example, Vietnam ranks 175 out of 180 in the 2018
World Press Freedom Index, emphasising that the only sources of
independently-reported information are provided by bloggers and
citizen-journals, i.e. online platforms that allow citizens who are at the
scene to report breaking news and upload content that is not covered by
mainstream media. Amnesty
International reports that arbitrary restrictions on social and political
rights continue, and the crackdown on freedom of expression and criticism
directed against the government has intensified, causing many activists to flee
the country. Particularly concerned are bloggers, pro-democracy activists,
Anti-China activists and environmentalists. Among the politically persecuted are
former teacher Đao Quang Thực who was sentenced to 14 years in prison, teacher
Vũ Văn Hùng who has been arrested several times since 2008, and scholar activist
Nguyễn Quang A. who is now barred from leaving the country. All of these
activists were committed to non-violent forms of action.
Four tactics: Hiding, fleeing, creating and merging
Social movements are usually
concerned with four main tasks: first, to strengthen the voice of the oppressed
and the marginalized. Second, to learn from other movements’ knowledges, strategies
and tactics. Third, to build networks of international solidarity. Fourth, to work
towards an emancipatory political programme that provides the groundwork for these
strong international ties.
Yet, different contexts demand
different actions. In authoritarian countries like Vietnam, activists (and
non-activists) are required to embrace tactics that facilitate the circumvention
of acute state repression, including hiding, fleeing, creating and merging.
In the following I provide an explanation of how these tactics are being used
in the Vietnamese context.
Hiding
Hiding as a tactic of resistance
by subjects largely incapable of resisting through other means, was extensively
discussed by James Scott
(1987). With the example of peasants in Malaysia, he demonstrated that
everyday resistance was being used against a party of greater formal power,
i.e. the state. Beneath the servant’s shallow obedience to the master lies the
“hidden transcripts” – the quiet, piecemeal process by which opponents and the marginalized
often find ways of encroachment aiming at tacit, de facto improvements of their
livelihoods. Heated debates in taxis, or discussions amongst workers when no
supervisor is around, ranting about the news while it broadcasts national and
international politics, are the kind of hidden transcripts one may observe by paying
closer attention to everyday life in Vietnam and elsewhere.
Hiding, however, also exists in
more explicit forms. This might sound contradictory at first sight, but
encrypted technology and social media platforms carry both features: anonymity
and a tool for ‘hidden’ horizontal mobilization. After years of organising
through Facebook groups (53 million Facebook users in a country of 93 million),
the Communist Party passed a law that required Internet companies to scrub
critical content and hand over user data to the government. In less than a
week, not only activists but 100,000 newly active users in Vietnam registered
to use minds.com,
a crypto-social network. Currently,
10%
of Minds total user base of a little more than 1 million accounts are for
users located in Vietnam. As these platforms provide secure communication,
activists and critics alike communicate through tactics of electronic hiding,
while the government’s hands remain tied.
In
less than a week, not only activists but 100,000 newly active users in Vietnam
registered to use minds.com, a crypto-social network.
Fleeing
Fleeing and domestic migration has
always been part of everyday resistance, and thus a way of circumventing state
repression. Particularly for dissident activists, journalists and intellectuals
living in repressive environments, fleeing may be the only way to avoid
incarceration or obtain early release. Human rights attorney Nguyễn Văn Đài, for example, was charged under Article 79, an ambiguous clause
that regulates activities aimed toward the ‘overthrow of the People’s Administration’.
A charge under Article 79 carries a sentence of up to life imprisonment, and
possibly the death penalty. However, an early release of prisoners of
conscience can be granted if they agree to go into exile. After serving two
years in prison Nguyễn Văn Đài received the Human Rights award
2017 of the German Association of Judges and was thereupon granted asylum in
Germany. Similarly, Bùi Thanh Hiếu (PEN
Germany, Writers in Exile Program), one of the most prominent bloggers and
organizers active since 2005, was repeatedly arrested. In 2013 he received the
invitation of the German city of Weimar and left the country.
Members of minority and religious
groups have also been subjected to state repression. For example, the prominent
member of the Catholic church Đặng Xuân Diệu who has been involved in social
activism, community organising and the blogger scene, was arrested in
2011. After serving six years of a 13-year sentence, he was finally granted
asylum in France. Another member, Pastor Nguyễn Công Chính, was
released after five years of an 11-year sentence and fled to the US in exile in 2017.
However, these activists’ stories do not end with
them living in exile. Rather, new political opportunities, that is to say, new
resources for publishing and organising, join the activists’ repertoires, while
more direct collective actions are yet to be realised by those who stay in the country.
Creating
With activists (and former
political refugees) in exile, national community organizing is complemented by
international support groups. Local activists are increasingly strengthened by
self-organised – however partly ideology driven – networks including the Việt Tân Party (former NUFLV or The Front, an
international underground movement formed in 1982 initially aimed at toppling
the Communist regime through popular uprising, while today it aims at the
country’s reformation towards a democratic state), diasporic news agencies, groups
and campaigns for religious and ethnic minorities and International NGOs.
One of most prominent movement
groups is Brotherhood
for Democracy, which
partly grew out of Bloc 8406.
Both groups comprise of intellectuals, journalists, bloggers, lawyers, former
Party members and business people. The creation of alternative news websites
and blogs such as The 88 Project,
The Vietnamese and RFA are also a major
component for distributing information despite state censorship. While these
websites are banned in Vietnam, the power of these online spaces should not be
underestimated. Foreign-based online forums, including talawas.org, ykien.net,
Yahoo! 360* (shut down since 2009) and danchimviet.info,
have also become influential domestically.
Besides the creation of safer
online spaces, it is the protected offline spaces that bring together a large
number of activists. No-U
FC football association is one example of how activists create spaces by
using loopholes. Appealing to the Vietnamese constitution, by which every
natural person has the right to exercise and sports activities, No-U FC chose
to agitate within the defined limits of the one-party regime. They
re-appropriate the spaces of sports for the purpose of grassroots politics. What is unique, although not new, is that members and
supporters of the soccer association itself found themselves being part of a
dissident movement.
What is unique, although not new,
is that members and supporters of the soccer association itself found
themselves being part of a dissident movement. Organised since 2011, the “U” in
No-U FC symbolizes the U-shaped “nine-dash line” that China draws on maps to
demarcate their sovereignty over a major territory in the South China Sea
including the highly disputed Paracel and Spratly islands. In brief, the No-U
FC criticizes the Vietnamese government’s compromising attitude towards China’s
aggression and the infinite economic dependency on China, but also raises questions of democracy, freedom of press
and assembly, environmental issues, and social justice for political prisoners.
While meeting on a regular base to play football like
other ordinary football clubs, they in fact also talk politics, exchange news,
plan campaigns, demonstrations and petitions etc. In contrast to everyday forms
of resistance conducted by peasants (in the Scottian sense), members of No-U FC
seem not to be confined by structures of everyday life but, on the
contrary, seek to transform those structures into political tactics.
Merging
Finally, a lesson to learn from
the strengths of dissident groups in Vietnam lies in their habit of raising
cross-sectional demands that address issues of the environment, labour, foreign
direct investments, social rights and political accountability. Tactical
alliances, however, were hardly standard practice a few years ago. With the
emergence of some uproarious environmental activism in 2009 (against
Chinese-run bauxite mines in the Central Highlands region) various groups with
different political aims and concerns started to strengthen their ties. Ties
that linked previously separate subjects and groups together, began to provide
a common ground for trade unionists, religious leaders, human rights & democracy campaigners, as well as
peasants and workers.
Another example of such a tactical
alliance gained a voice during the nationwide June 2018 protests. Activists and
first-time demonstrators, lawyers, farmers and doctors jointly criticized the
government’s draft law. They demanded
the government to withdraw the proposal on new Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and
maintain the country’s sovereignty vis-à-vis China, and to guarantee freedom of
speech and personal data security.
Yet, some Vietnamese activists argue that issues like environmental
protection and the critique of SEZs are misappropriated by right-wing ideologues
and opportunists whose actual strategy contains a nationalist agenda that fails
to analytically distinguish between Chinese imperialism and Sinophobia. Having said this, it remains to be
seen whether the tactics of merging carry valuable opportunities for the
creation of progressive movements, or whether a ‘politics of coalition’ ends up
being a fatal aberration.
Beyond the given power
structures
The activists’ awareness of the
complexities and entanglements of various social, political and economic issues
is the key condition for going beyond struggles over personal or identity-based
gains. Moreover, it allows them to address large sections of Vietnamese
society, while ties and cooperation among different groups grow organically.
Anh-Susann Pham Thi. Twitter. Fair use. The various campaigns, protest
events and collective actors represent a starting point for societal
transformation. Certainly, insights into the tactics of Vietnamese activists
might not explicitly contribute to a direct learning effect for non-Vietnamese
as both internal and external tactics to circumvent repression must vary.
However, it does help to identify the diversities and common elements that make
a further step towards a world based on international solidarity and support
structures possible.
In addition, knowing about the
tactics and strategies of other struggles enhances our imagination and our
aesthetic power to create the tools for another future. Yet acknowledging the
existence of alternative tactics and possible alternative political strategies
is not enough. International solidarity based on a progressive agenda that
emancipates us from the dualism of capitalism vs. socialism and reaches beyond
the given power structures remains fundamental.
