High-Level Dissenter Urges Move to Democracy in Hanoi

In an unprecedented display of high-level dissent in Vietnam, Lt. Gen. Tran Do, a veteran of the Communist revolution who later became one of the regime’s top ideological leaders, has called upon the leadership in Hanoi to open the way for democracy.

The retired general sent a letter last December to the Communist Party’s top officials, urging “radical political reforms” including free elections and guarantees of freedom of thought and expression.

“We must thoroughly grasp what [Vietnam’s late] President Ho Chi Minh has said: ‘Independence without freedom and happiness is meaningless,’ ” the general wrote. “To have freedom and happiness, we must have democracy.”

In the view of experts on Vietnam, what--if anything--happens to Do will test the willingness of the country’s leadership to tolerate a degree of political opposition.

In the past, such broad-based public criticisms of Vietnam’s repressive regime have been made only from the safety of exile. But Do, the most senior party official to have pushed democratic reforms, continues to live in Hanoi.

Three years ago, when Hoang Minh Chin, another Vietnamese revolutionary leader, sent a letter to the leadership calling for democratization, he was imprisoned for 12 months.

“This is really interesting,” said one U.S. government specialist on Vietnam. “It’ll be worth watching to see what happens to this guy.”

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Do’s dissent appears to have been prompted by growing rural unrest in his home province of Thai Binh, about 65 miles southeast of Hanoi. There, retired soldiers who once fought for the Vietnamese rebellion against French colonial rule and later for North Vietnam against South Vietnam and the United States have in recent months been conducting a series of protests.

“The peasants of Thai Binh, as I have had the direct experience of working with them, have from a long time ago been a solid social foundation for our party’s work during the revolutionary period, during the resistance” against France, South Vietnam and the United States, Do wrote. “Yet these very same peasants are now turning their backs on the grass-roots party organizations to defend themselves.”

Do’s letter became public through a circuitous route. The general sent a copy to a friend in Moscow, who then turned it over to news correspondents. The letter was first made public earlier this week by Radio Free Asia, an independent but federally funded broadcasting corporation based in Washington. Do confirmed both to RFA and to Agence France-Presse that he wrote the letter.

Le Bang, the Vietnamese ambassador to Washington, said he is unfamiliar with Do’s letter. But he noted that Do is no longer active in government circles. He also said: “Democracy in Vietnam is developing, step by step.”

In its annual human rights report, released last week, the State Department said that in 1997 the Vietnamese government “continued to repress basic political and some religious freedoms and to commit numerous abuses. . . . The government continued its long-standing policy of not tolerating most types of public dissent, although exceptions were made if they appeared to serve the interests of the party or the government.”

Do, 74, joined the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1940. He became a general in 1958 and served as a political officer for Vietnamese forces fighting the United States in the Vietnam War.

After the war, he became a senior party official dealing with ideology, culture, literature and art. He was a member of the party’s Central Committee.

In his letter, he called upon the Vietnamese Communist Party to “abandon the formula in which the party controls everything absolutely. . . . If we do not kick ourselves out of this sickly morass, then we will collapse, and it will be an irretrievable collapse.”

The Clinton administration established diplomatic relations with Hanoi in 1995. Last December, administration officials told Congress that they were preparing to open the way for normalized economic relations with Vietnam by granting the Hanoi regime a waiver from the “Jackson-Vanik Amendment,” which blocks full-scale U.S. trade and investment with any Communist country unless it allows free emigration.

Over the past few weeks, some Vietnamese exile groups have been organizing protests to the White House, urging it to preserve the existing trade restrictions.

These groups argue that Clinton should require Vietnam to make human rights improvements and allow greater political freedom before he waives the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.