8:22 AM
Trung
By JAMES HOOKWAY And NGUYEN ANH THU
HAIPHONG, Vietnam - Two Vietnamese fish farmers who laid
mines and fired homemade guns at police attempting to evict them were
convicted and sentenced to five years in prison Friday in a case that
has cast a spotlight on the contentious issue of land rights in the
one-party Communist state.
Doan Van Vuon, a 50-year-old army veteran, became an underground folk
hero when he resisted a government land grab in January 2012.
Mr. Vuon and his brother, Doan Van Quy, and other members of their
family had established a thriving fish and prawn farm on 41 hectares, or
101 acres, of swampland they were given in 1993 near the bustling port
city of Haiphong, 60 miles east of Hanoi. In 2007, authorities informed
the family that they wanted the land back—an increasingly common
occurrence in fast-growing Vietnam—without offering compensation.
Instead of quietly handing the land back, family members led by Mr. Vuon
set up a perimeter around the lot, laying land mines and fashioning
homemade guns to cement their claim to the farm. When a team of police
and army troops moved in to evict the family, a gunbattle began in which
six security officials were injured. Mr. Vuon and three members of his
family were arrested.
"I was pushed into a corner and I had no other way," Mr. Vuon told the court. He said he only intended to scare security officials rather than harm them.
Judge Pham Duc Tuyen on Friday sentenced Mr. Vuon and Mr. Quy to five
years in prison for attempted murder, while another brother and a nephew
were sentenced to two years and 3½ years in prison. The judge said the
family's actions were dangerous and had a "bad impact on the social order and social management of Haiphong City in particular and the country as a whole."
Defense lawyer Nguyen Viet Hung said that he wasn't given enough time to
make his case and the family plans to appeal the verdict.
The showdown last year in Haiphong caused uproar in Vietnam, where the
state owns all the land and assigns rights to use it. Disputes are
common. Farmers often protest against government moves to force them off
their land to build industrial parks or tourism developments.
The problem is likely to grow worse in the coming years as a number of
land-use agreements, which often expire after 20 years, begin to lapse.
Carlyle Thayer, a professor at Australia's University of New South
Wales, has said that the lack of transparency in how the government
decides who gets what land is an additional challenge.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights
Watch, said that the growing unrest over land seizures was a warning
sign to the Vietnamese authorities.
"The issue of widespread, arbitrary land seizures by corrupt
officials or without much due process and just compensation is what
really made this trial resonate in the minds of ordinary Vietnamese
people," he said.
Few land rows have generated as much heat as the standoff at Mr. Vuon's
fish farm. Bloggers quickly seized on it as evidence of heavy-handed
government rule, and news of the incident quickly spread on the
Internet, which many Vietnamese use to get news and opinions that are
otherwise suppressed or not reported by government-run media.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung responded by declaring the eviction
illegal, and state media reports said that more than 50 officials in
Haiphong have been disciplined or reprimanded for their role in the
raid. Several are being prosecuted for unlawfully destroying Mr. Vuon's
home.
Dozens of protesters attempted to attend their trial to show support for
the family, but were prevented by police from approaching the court
building. Authorities also gave journalists limited access to the trial.
Mr. Quy's wife, Pham Thi Bau, said family members are now living in
tents on their land. She said the family had borrowed $500,000 from
relatives and friends to invest in the fish-farm project, building dykes
to hold back the ocean and constructing several houses for the extended
family members who live in the compound.
When the family received the eviction notice in 2007, they stopped
investing in the property with only half of the loan repaid, she said.
"If there was no eviction notice, we could have made money, we could have paid off the loans," Ms. Bau said. The fish business was earning the family a profit of about $30,000 a year.
She said the family will now wait to appeal Friday's convictions.
"If there is no justice I will lose my trust in the Party and the government," Ms. Bau said.
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