Vietnamese peasants sue communist cadres suspected of corruption

Tue 26 May 98 - 11:27 GMT

HANOI, May 26 (AFP) - A group of peasants demanding that cadres be sued for corrupt practices filed a petition with local authorities in the province of Nam Dinh, Vietnam's foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

"On May 10, 1998 some people from two villages of My Thang communes, My Loc district came to the office of the People's Committee of Nam Dinh province, filing petitions to sue some grassroot cadres who had signs of corruption," the spokesman said.

However he said, "the situation in Nam Dinh is still normal," refuting reports by Paris-based activist group Free Vietnam Alliance (FVA) of "demonstrations spreading to other districts."

A May 22 statement by FVA said 500 peasants surrounded the provincial people's committee to protest "the heavy and arbitrary taxation and related corruption by the officials." The report said the protest had "spread to the surrounding districts of Y Yen, Vu Ban, Nam Truc and Bui Chu."

The spokesman denied these claims, adding, "information given by the Free Vietnam Alliance is untrue and of ill intention."

Nam Dinh, home to Vietnam's largest textile company which in April was involved in the country's biggest corruption trial, neighbours Thai Binh province where widespread peasant unrest erupted last year.

Meanwhile the Communist Party organ, Nhan Dan, ran a front page editorial urging more effective democracy at grassroots levels, leading observers to speculate it was related to the developments in Nam Dinh.

The editorial said if "all measures and policies implementing socio-economic facets at grassroots levels receive contributing ideas from the people, and check through forms of direct direct democracy and representative democracy then (they) will definitely achieve high efficiency, limit mistakes and prevent negativeness."