As Tran Cong Tien tells it, he was mad as hell and he wasn’t going to takeit anymore. Pulled over by a Hanoi traffic cop a few weeks ago for driving inthe wrong direction down a one-way street, he says he tried to bereasonable. Tien claims the $6 bribe offered was more than fair, but theofficer wanted more to ignore the traffic violation. Words between the twoescalated. Insults flew. And then Tien snapped. “I grabbed his neck andpushed hard,” he says. “I have never dared challenge the police. I’m fed upwith corruption and at that moment I was just so frustrated!”
Tien was eventually let go when another officer came along and defused thesituation. But he is not alone in his rage. In southern Kien Giang provincein December, angry villagers threw flaming gasoline canisters at policecommandeering their property and briefly held three of them hostage, forcingone to disrobe. Last year, farmers in Hung Yen province battled authoritiestrying to seize their land and resell it to developers. “Men, women andchildren fought back with their bare hands, with mud, with anything theycould grab,” said Nguyen Dinh Liem, who was working in his rice paddy whenpolice arrived. “I had never seen that kind of thing before.” (See pictures of the Vietnam-China border war.)
Corruption in Vietnam is nothing new. Last year, Transparency Internationalranked Vietnam 121st out of 180 on its Corruption Perception Index. But it wasperhaps easier to overlook occasional shakedowns from officials when Vietnam’s economy wasdoing well and incomes were doubling every few years. That’s no longer thecase. People being squeezed by the economic downturn are increasinglyfrustrated by the nation’s enduring corruption, says Trinh Hoa Binh, head ofenvironment and health at the government-run Institute of Sociology inHanoi. Officials are maintaining their special privileges while the economicposition of ordinary Vietnamese is becoming more precarious. They areincensed, he says, that corrupt officials are rarely punished for takingbribes.
The anti-police backlash playing out around the country is unusual considering that Vietnam is a relativelyefficient authoritarian state where dissent is rarely tolerated. In two recent incidents, motorcycle riders pulled over by police set their own bikes alight rather than let them be impounded. Last month, a car dragged a Hanoi policeman 15 feet before racing off. An angry crowd seeing a cop roughing up a driver in the southern province of Dong Nai used bricks to smash the officers motorcycle.
The incidents have garnered only limited attention in state-run media, which dismissmost as the work of criminal minds or hooligans. Butwitnesses, who have posted videos and camera-phone shots online of burning motorcycles and farmers battling police, say the spurt of violenceis a sign that the public has finally had it with corruption.
The government won’t confirm whether attacks on police are on the rise, butit is concerned enough that the Ministry of Public Security held aconference late last year to address the issue. Colonel Huynh The Ky, thedirector of security in southern Ninh Thuan province who attended theconference, attributed the increase to “teenagers who lack proper educationand are corrupted.” Ky said he would like to see police provided with more sophisticated equipment in order to protect themselves,but he added that the “attitude of some police officials sometimes is notappropriate. Police have to work in the spirit of serving the people. Theymust have proper behavior.”
Vietnam’s working classes have risen up against authorities before — withresults. The most famous farmers’ revolt took place in the northern provinceof Thai Binh in 1997. Burdened by excessive taxation and illegal fees,thousands of villagers challenged local officials over the course of severalmonths. When their demands to be heard were ignored, they stoned CommunistParty cadres, attacked their offices and homes, and held officials hostagefor days. The national government eventually took charge, disciplining localofficials and sending some to jail, along with some of the farmers. Thefollowing year, a national law known as Decree 29 was passed, allowing formore participation in local decision-making and giving citizens moreopportunities to vent their grievances to commune-level officials.
The past decade of stunning economic growth in Vietnam helped to ease thesefrustrations. But 10 years on, with only marginal improvements intransparency and with corruption still rampant, patience is wearing dangerouslythin again — a fact that Vietnam’s leadership recognizes. “There iscorruption and abuse of power in local areas,” concedes Nguyen Minh Thuyet,a senior member of Vietnam’s National Assembly. Though he does not condonethe recent attacks on government property, Thuyet says he understands theanger and agrees that the government must do more to improve transparency.
As jobs continue to vanish and inflation eats away at wages, it is not goingto be as easy to placate those who are being hit the hardest whenpolice attempt to extort them for petty cash. “The police are even morecorrupt than they were before,” Hanoi taxi driver Nguyen Van Cuong saysbitterly. “In one day, I can be stopped several times.” And where 100,000dong, or about $6, might have been enough a few years ago, now nothing lessthan 200,000 will do. “It means some days I work for nothing, as they takeeverything I make,” Cuong says. “How can you not get angry?”