Dissent and despotism in Vietnam

 

Vietnamese land-rights activist Trinh Ba Phuong (center) is shown with his mother, Can Thi Theu, and his brother, Trinh Ba Tu, in an undated photo.
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Ref: Vietnamese Activist Sent Back to Detention After Mental Hospital Stay for ‘Evaluation’

 

 

by Manekseka Sangkum

 

If the fight for democracy and civil liberty is an uphill struggle for predominantly Buddhist cultures such as Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia – all three peoples are followers of Theravada tradition of Buddhism, unlike the non-mainstream Buddhists found in China or Vietnam who abide by Mahayana [‘Greater Vehicle’] precepts – then the path to democracy for the peoples of these latter countries are doubly more so. Like the perversion of Marxian doctrine to galvanise the ‘masses’ and justify single party discipline and tyranny in the guise of ‘proletarian dictatorship’, the age-old Confucian ethics and practices have also been modified and distorted for much the same reasons and convenience by the ruling regimes in these states.
 

When the term “Oriental despotism” is mentioned most will think of these Sino-cultures as prime standard-bearers where the ‘citizens’ are viewed as ‘subjects’ in the term’s more commonly and pejoratively understood or implied rather than the rights and duties that are associated with the citizenry in its democratic, libertarian sense and expectations.  
 

 

For a number of historical reasons and circumstances, the same despotic mindset [which filters over and across to the family unit in terms of its demand for conformity and punishment or even intolerance for disobedience or deviance as indicated by the phenomenon of domestic violence, in particular] is, perhaps, even more pronounced in Vietnam. The steel-like organism there that allows no clear separation or distinctions between state and citizens had served the country well in its long struggle against Chinese enslavement and oppression, resisting foreign invaders as well as its greatest – but not necessarily the most arduous – feat: southward territorial expansion or ‘Nam Tien’.
 

Eyes are said to have rolled when the Hanoi regime recently applied to have a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Commission. The regime’s spokesperson claimed that his ‘government’ ‘fully respect human rights, even in these most trying of times’! From his cultural point of view, it can be argued that he’s entitled to make such a claim and that the claim wouldn’t be invalid in that specific cultural context. If one could conceivably envisage what it must be like living in an ant’s colony, seeing as a matter of routine how organic efficiency is ordered and managed; the soldier-ants repelling the invaders, the commanding ants organise the troops for the defence and attack, the sick ants are treated, mechanically discharged or disposed of…
 

Well, that’s the state that ninety million or so Vietnamese are finding themselves in – in microcosm.