ASIA	MARCH 9, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 9
	Sensing an Opening: Vietnam's Outspoken Ones By TIM LARIMER /HANOI here's a kind of bamboo plant in central Vietnam that produces a small, silvery green flower, but it blooms just once every four or five years, if ever. Vietnam's political dissidents are a lot like that bamboo, and among their ranks, none blossoms more regularly than Phan Dinh Dieu. The Soviet-educated mathematician, 61, was the first director of Hanoi's Institute of Computer Science and headed a panel that established the government's policy on information technology. He pops up every few years with a stinging critique of the ruling Communist Party, and now he's at it again, with a bold call for democracy, freedom of speech and an end to the communists' monopoly on power. He even made the appeal right in the lion's den, at a meeting of top officials late last year. "In the present circumstances of our nation," he said, "one can no longer claim to be loyal to some ancient ideology so as to impose it on society; one cannot rely on old glories that belong to another generation." Such talk has never been a good career move in Vietnam. Cadres have been bounced off the Politburo, out of their jobs and the party, and into prison or oblivion for saying less. Human rights groups estimate at least 70 political and religious dissidents are now in jail. Several writers and intellectuals who had circulated letters about corruption and the need for political pluralism last year are under virtual house arrest. So it is with more than a little curiosity that people regard Dieu. He has never joined the Communist Party, though he was a member of the National Assembly just after the Vietnam War. "I do not oppose the party," he told TIME last week. "But I understood a very long time ago that communism was not the appropriate way for our country. So I never joined." Dieu is a member of the presidium of the Fatherland Front, a powerful umbrella group for all organizations in Vietnam, and that is where he made his scathing remarks in December. He had made similar comments in 1991 and again in 1993. Because Dieu apparently has not been punished, some overseas Vietnamese who oppose the government suspect he may be a tool of the party, a token dissident trotted out every few years to answer criticisms that free speech is curtailed. But Dieu denies such charges. "I cannot explain why I have suffered no consequences," he says. In fact, he was ousted from the National Assembly in 1986, lost his job at the National Center for Scientific Research in 1993, and resigned from the information technology panel last year. "Those events are very independent from my speech and writing," he contends. "I was not punished." What helps explain his staying power is the careful way he uses the system. Dieu, who declined to be photographed, told TIME he does not consider himself a dissident and has no use for anti-communist renegades. He chooses propitious moments, when there is a change in party leadership, for example, or when domestic problems allow for frank discussion. "I have no political ambition," he says. "I would very much like to do as other scientists--to study, to learn, to teach. But I am also a citizen. I have to contribute to the life of our country." A confluence of events--rural unrest in Thai Binh province, an economic downturn and the installation last year of a new leadership--seems to have inspired others, like Dieu, to express their dissent. A retired general, Tran Do, wrote an open letter to party leaders, warning, "If we do not kick ourselves out of this sickly morass we will collapse...and if we let the morass linger on, then we will have increasing social instability." In a letter to the party leadership, Hoang Huu Nhan, a former high-ranking economics adviser to the party, has called for more dramatic economic reforms. "People seem to be emboldened," says Carlyle Thayer, an Australian scholar of Vietnamese politics. "It's a time of fluidity, and that's a time for people to get ideas out." Dieu insists he has not been in communication with Tran Do or Nhan. Thayer suspects, however, that "there are probably many people who agree with him and who invited him to say what they don't want to be identified with themselves." In recent years, the door has sometimes opened a crack to allow such debate, but then closed just as quickly. In the late 1980s, political discourse was relaxed--until Vietnamese leaders saw communist governments toppling in Eastern Europe. Dieu and others spoke out during a 1991 leadership change. This time, the new Party General Secretary, Le Kha Phieu, has met with Tran Do and with dissident Hoang Minh Chinh, who has been in and out of prison since the 1960s, according to sources close to the two men. None of these meetings, or speeches like Dieu's, are publicized in Vietnam's state-run media, and some prominent writers and journalists have been warned by police not to have contact with Tran Do or Dieu. But the Foreign Ministry, in a written response to questions from foreign journalists, says such criticisms of the party are merely "a normal thing." A septuagenarian writer is cheered that so far the government hasn't been responding as it normally does, by cracking down on dissidents. "For 40 years, I have lived on the fringes of society," he says. "But still I have hope. Our current crisis means not all of the leaders can be deaf. Before, they would have thrown this stuff in a trash bin and disciplined the authors. Now, they leave them alone." Many younger Vietnamese are less sanguine. "The party views these people like mosquitoes," says a writer in his 30s whose bleak portrayals of a disintegrating society have irritated authorities. "They annoy you, but they can't kill you." What remains to be seen is whether the vocal dissenters will suffer the same fate as the rarely blooming bamboo plant: after it flowers, it usually dies. Dieu, however, is a survivor. "If I can say what I believe," he says, "then other people can voice their opinions too, and maybe we can have the beginning of democracy." --By Tim Larimer/Hanoi
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