Hanoi orders report on southern province unrest

04:24 a.m. Nov 11, 1997 Eastern

By Adrian Edwards
HANOI, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Communist party officials said on Tuesday that the government had ordered a detailed report on the situation in southern Vietnam's Dong Nai province, where several thousand people have been involved in clashes with police.

Officials told Reuters that a formal assessment of the situation -- which residents said was still highly charged on Tuesday -- had been compiled and sent to the offices of the elite Communist Party Central Committee in Hanoi.

Details were not available, but the level at which the report was addressed appeared to reflect significant concern over the troubles in a province just 60 km (40 miles) from Ho Chi Minh City, and which come just days ahead of Hanoi's first international summit.

A local government official in Dong Nai, who on Monday blamed ``bad elements'' for the troubles, declined all comment on the situation and referred queries to officials in Hanoi -- who in turn were not available to respond.

But residents in both Dong Nai and Ho Chi Minh City said the mood in Thong Nhat district, the area where the troubles were centred, remained volatile.

They reported no new clashes, but said about a hundred women and children were gathered outside local government offices.

Other sources reported a continued heavy police presence in the area. An unconfirmed report said residents had set up tables and makeshift barricades on a section of the country's main north- south highway using tables, chairs and hewn-down trees.

The troubles in Dong Nai centre around an area populated by Catholics who migrated south in 1954 from northern Vietnam.

Residents said the problems started on Friday when women, carrying banners, began gathering outside the district People's Committee building to protest land ownership grievances and alleged corruption.

They say land was taken from them by the authorities for a large market, but that only a small market was created and the remainder of the land was sold off.

The situation became violent on Saturday when thousands of people joined in and riot police intervened.

At least four people were seriously injured in the battles that followed. Police vehicles and the homes of local government officials were attacked, with some set on fire.

The local government official told Reuters on Monday that the authorities had asked church officials to intervene, and said a senior bishop had issued a statement calling for calm.

The violence, although rare, is not the first in Vietnam this year. But it is the first serious trouble in the southern part of the country in recent years.

Coming just days ahead of a summit in Hanoi of nearly 50 Francophone nations, it could be an embarrassment for the government, which has been hoping the event will help showcase its reform and open-door achievements of the past 10 years.

Human Rights Watch/Asia referred to problems of unrest in a critical report on Tuesday on the country's rights situation.

It said that with no right to association and no freedom of expression through the media, the country's rural population had no legal channel to voice their grievances.