Rights group appeals to donors over Vietnam unrest

02:56 a.m. Dec 10, 1997 Eastern

By Adrian Edwards
HANOI, Dec 10 (Reuters) - An international rights group warned on Wednesday that Vietnam had armed itself with new tools for social and political control amid growing rural unrest, and urged major aid donors to press for improvements.

A report issued by Human Rights Watch, ahead of a World Bank meeting of donors this week in Tokyo, said Hanoi had clamped down on foreign and domestic media coverage of recent and continuing troubles in Thai Binh and Dong Nai provinces.

It warned that local officials were also using new powers of administrative detention to arbitrarily detain people suspected of threatening national security.

Beyond statements of intent Vietnam's leaders were taking no concrete actions to address the fundamental grievances behind the troubles, it said, adding that donors should urge them to go beyond rhetoric in addressing the issues.

``After a decade of economic growth, there is now a downward trend in Vietnam,'' it said.

``Despite statements by Communist Party Secretary Do Muoi that to maintain stability, citizens should be allowed to 'exercise their democratic rights through the mass media', the government has clamped down on domestic and foreign media coverage of these disputes and put in place new tools for social and political control.''

The report follows months of unrest in Thai Binh, which lies southeast of Hanoi, and recent clashes between several thousand Catholic residents and police in the southern province of Dong Nai.

In both cases popular anger over corruption and land disputes have played a role. But the Human Rights Watch report said grievances in Thai Binh over a compulsory labour programme were also to blame.

Details as well as the precise cause of the troubles in both places have been difficult to come by and assess. Foreign journalists have been barred from visiting the areas, while official statements have been vague.

Residents and others say the situation remains volatile in both provinces. Police remain unable to enter several areas in Thai Binh. Recent visitors to Dong Nai say the situation has calmed but details of the precise cause remain sparse.

A recent report from the area said the Catholic protests took place in an area where work is under way on construction of a Buddhist temple, but the details have been impossible to verify.

Vietnam has received some $8.5 billion in official development assistance since returning to the international financial fold in 1993, and World Bank officials are asking donors at this week's meeting to match last year's record pledge of $2.4 billion.

But pressures are mounting on the former ``darling'' of the international donor community amid frustration by some at slow rates of aid disbursement, and strong evidence of fatigue in Hanoi's decade-old process of economic reforms.

The Human Rights Watch report urged donors to make further financial and technical assistance conditional on the government's willingness to conform to international standards of freedoms of the press, association, speech and assembly.

It also said donors should raise concerns about the use of administrative detention as an instrument of political control.