Dissident Que is out of jail, but hardly a free man. TIM LARIMER

When Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, a prominent Vietnamese dissident, was released from a prison camp in September, his supporters waited to glimpse the man accused of plotting to overthrow the government and detained for 18 of the past 20 years. But the 56-year-old physician slipped away to a seaside resort and declined to talk to anyone, an unexplained reticence as unsettling as his imprisonment. A month later, Que met a Time correspondent at his home near Cholon, Ho Chi Minh City's Chinatown. But he also had some unexpected guests: four grim-faced security officials and a uniformed policeman who stayed through part of the interview in an adjacent room. "They arrived two minutes before you," Que said in a panicked whisper. "They make things so difficult."

That's the ruling Communist Party's stock-in-trade, an adroit skill at stifling calls for political reform that have grown louder in recent months. Vietnam may not look like a totalitarian state--no huge pictures of a great leader, no masses of flag-waving youth, no ostentatious military parades. But a pervasive security apparatus monitors anyone considered risky, and those suspected of "harming national security" can be detained indefinitely without trial. That's what happened earlier this year to a number of farmers who publicly protested questionable land deals involving Catholic church property. When locking people up doesn't work, the government isolates potential troublemakers in their homes. A United Nations representative on an official visit in October to survey religious practices was barred from entering several pagodas. Security officials routinely surround the homes of several outspoken government critics and stop friends and relatives from visiting.

Appearances deceive. Newsstands are crammed with more than 500 publications printing juicy stories about corruption scandals, social problems and crime. But top editors must be Communist Party members, and all are under the direct control of an ideological committee. An editor of a business newspaper was arrested and jailed for more than a year because the government claimed state secrets were revealed in an article about a corruption case the government itself had publicized. A journalist who won a U.N. fellowship was denied an exit visa to claim it. A few Internet cafes have opened. But a college student surfing the Net earlier this year found out how tenuous those businesses are when police raided a Ho Chi Minh City cafe, disconnected the computer terminal he was using and carted it away. "People outside hear about the new market economy and forget that Vietnam is a police state," said Que, talking in a hoarse whisper. "They think the ability to make money means we are free."

The government talks about giving "voters," as the state press recently started calling communist cadres, more say in who runs villages. But elections are a charade. People are required to vote; those who fail to show at polling places are visited by neighborhood officials who bring ballots with them. The National Assembly allowed non-communists to run for seats in 1997, but all candidates had to be approved. The few outspoken critics who tried to run were asked to step aside. "They told me I was too old," said Vo Tong Xuan, a former assembly member and respected agricultural economist.

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R E L A T E D S T O R I E S : RELIGIOUS FREEDOM An outspoken monk is released