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Dong Tam Report
by Pham Doan Trang & Will Nguyen, September 2020
Summary: On
January 9, 2020, between 1 and 3 AM, thousands of police from special task,
riot, criminal, and investigative units cordon off Dong Tam in coordination with
local ground forces and attacked villagers; the early morning attack was the
culmination of a long-running dispute over Senh Field, a 59-hectare parcel of
land about five kilometers away.
The villagers were never officially notified of the attack but had heard over
public loudspeakers the week prior that the land was “for national defense
purposes,”
a position the government had reiterated for years regarding the disputed piece
of land.
Realizing the sudden message was an implicit warning that the government was
about to crack down, Dong Tam villagers declared in a video recorded several
hours before the attack that they would “fight to the death” to hold onto the
land.
Citizen-blogger social media reports say police cut internet and phone lines in
pre-meditation, then burst into the village with tear gas and grenades filled
with plastic ball bearings. They then descended upon village leader Le Dinh
Kinh’s house, shooting and killing Kinh.
Witnesses describe “thousands of police officers rushing into the village” using
flash grenades, firing tear gas, shooting rubber bullets, blocking off all
pathways and alleys, and beating villagers indiscriminately, including women and
old people.
On the morning of January 9, 26 people, the majority of whom were members of
elder Le Dinh Kinh’s extended family, were arrested by police. Concurrently,
webpages belonging to Vietnam’s public opinion brigade began reporting on the
“the deaths of three martyrs” killed by “terrorists,” attaching
to these posts ambiguous pictures of charred corpses.
According to state-controlled media, which only quotes an official statement
from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), it was villagers who attacked police
with “grenades, petrol bombs, and knives” as officials tried to erect a wall
delineating Mieu Mon airport. The statement accuses villagers of obstructing
official duties and “disturbing public order,”
a catch-all often used to describe anti-government actions in Vietnam.
Video and photo evidence posted on social media provides ample evidence of
citizen mistreatment at the hands of the authorities, including a video in which
Kinh’s wife, Du Thi Thanh, speaks about how she was tortured by police into
giving a false statement that she had used grenades to attack law enforcement
officers.
On January 13, state media released photos of some of the arrested villagers
admitting guilt—covered in scrapes and bruises—and announced criminal proceeding
against 26 individuals (at timeof publication), including five of Kinh’s sons
and grandsons: Cong, Chuc, Quang, Doanh, and Uy, for “murder” and “obstruction
of officials.”
In the months that followed, police continued to arrest a number of other Dong
Tam residents.
On September 7, 2020, 29 individuals from Dong Tam were tried. The trial roiled
public opinion; a number of defendants claimed they were tortured into
confessing, as police mass-mobilized their forces, crowding the courtroom to
maintain order, tightly surveilling Dong Tam commune, as well as human rights
activists, and harassing and threatening lawyers. On September 9, after only
three days, the Procuracy recommended the death sentence for Le Dinh Cong and Le
Dinh Chuc (two of LeDinh Kinh’s sons). On Monday, September 14, the court
sentenced Le Dinh Cong and Le Dinh Chuc to death, Le Dinh Doanh (Kinh’s
grandson) to life in prison, and elder Bui Viet Hieu to 16 years in prison.
On paper and in media, the police, the Procuracy, and the People’s Court of
Hanoi consistently refer to the government’s attack on Dong Tam the night of
January 9 as “the case of murder and obstruction of officials that occurred in
Hoanh village, Dong Tam, My Duc, Hanoi, January 9, 2020.”
Because we do not agree with this incriminating (and cumbersome) moniker, this
report will refer to the occurrence as “the Dong Tam incident,”
“the Dong Tam event,”
or “the Dong Tam attack.”
Full report
About the
authors
Pham Doan Trang is
a Vietnamese journalist and democracy activist. After graduating from
Hanoi Foreign Trade University in 2001 with a degree in International Economics,
she worked in print media, TV production, and publishing. She is now working as
an editor for Luat Khoa, a Vietnamese magazine that focuses on political and
legal issues in Vietnam.
Trang is the author and co-author of many books, including “Anh Ba Sam”, “From
Facebook down to the Street,”
“An Overview of the Marine Life Disaster in Vietnam” (2016), “A Handbook of
Non-violent Resistance Techniques,”
“Politics for the Common People” (2017), “Learning Public Policy through
the Issue of Special Economic Zones” (2018), and “Politics of a Police State”
(2019).
Will Nguyen is
a writer and Vietnamese democracy activist. He works with civil society groups
in the Asia-Pacific region, training activists, translating dissident works and
news stories, and rallying international support in pursuit of political reform
in Vietnam. He graduated from Yale University in 2008 with a Bachelor’s in East Asian Studies, and in 2018, after completing his Master in Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Vietnam for his role in nationwide protests.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |