Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 5 Nov 1992 10:23:35 -0500
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Vietnam social chaos and crime wave

forward from soc.culture.vietnamese
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Vietnam Social Chaos and Crime Wave

The Wall street Journal
Tuesday October 20, 1992.
Page A16
Posted without permission.

	Vietnam Social Chaos and Crime Wave are Branded Byproducts of
			Capitalism


HANOI, Vietnam-  Tippped by a newspaper report, a local People's Committee
earlier this year dug up hundreds of graves in a Central Vietnam cemetery
reserved for revolutionairies who died fighting the U.S.-supported Saigon
government. Instead of human remains, they found dirt and sand and animal
bones.
	Investors say people had faked graves to collect government fees.
Perpetrators included the police and military chiefs of a commune, where the
scam was conceived by an entrepreneur.  The weekly newspaper that exposed the
wrongdoing denounced those "blinded by greed" who "smashed traditional
morality" involving respect for the dead.
	Indeed, the greeedy and the immoral often seem to have the upper hand
in Vietnam these days, and little is sacred anymore.

Social Chaos

	The way most commentators tell it, corruption is pervasive, smuggling
is rampant, and prostitution and drug addiction are out of control.  In what is
sometimes described by Western human-rights groups as a police state, the
police are nowehre to be seen.  The entire society seems close to breaking
down.
	"What we have is social chaos,' says Phan Xuan Bien, a professor of
ethnology who conducts research for the Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi
Minh City.
	Control crumbled when the Vietnamese Communist Party decided in late
1986 to switch from cnetral planning to a market economy.  Severe restrictions
on activities of ordinary people were lifted.  Vietnam was transformed
overnight from a bleak totalitarian state to a more lively place.

Economic Solution

	The  government concedes that the deteriorating social order is cause
for concern, but insists there is little that can be done. "That's the other
side of the market economy," says Hanoi spokeman Tran Cong Man.
	Social problems must be solved basically by economics, not by law and
morality, leaders argue.  For the time being, Vietnam's top priority is to get
rich, they say, and only then will the country have the mean to solve such
issues.
	"A few years ago, all social vices were attributed to the Saigon
government" that ruled South Vietnam until the communists took over in 1975,
says an intellectual.  "Now, all social vices are attributed to a market
economy."
	Fed by foreign investment, the reforms have changed the face of
Vietnam. Tourists have poured in, along with overseas businessmen.  Cars and
motobikes clog streets that only a short while ago coped mainly with bicycles.
Thousands of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and discos have sprung up across the
country.
	The new policies have been fairly successful.  Most farmers, the
backbone of Vietnam, are better off. A few people have become rich.
	But many others, especially in the towns and cities, are struggling to
survive in the unfamiliar, competitive environment in a country that remains
one of the poorest in the world.  Millions of jobless operate on society's
fringes, scavenging and hustling to avoid starvation.  Some turn to crime,
drugs or prostitution. Though comprehensive statistics aren't available, media
reports make it clear that crime of all kinds is on the rise.
	Drug addiction and prostitution, branded as byproducts of capitalism
and banned by the victorious communists in 1975, have returned in force.
Government figures show about 500,000 opium and heroin addicts in Vietnam's
population of 69 Million.  In Ho Chi Minh City, most of the city's 10,000
addicts live on the streets.  Unofficial estimates put the total number of
prostitutes at 300,000, up from about 100,000 two years ago.
	Graft has always been a problem among communists Vietnam's underpaid
civil servants.  But opportunities for corruption have grown enormously since
the reforms brought a veneer of prosperity to Vietnam.  Payoffs, kickbacks and
under-the-table commissions permeate daily life.
	Farmers are asked to pay up to 22 different illegal fees and charges,
covering everything from the installation of power to the construction of an
adminstration hall, according to an economist who helps frame government
policies.  Businesses cough up informal tolls amounting to five to 10 times the
rate of taxation.
	Vietnamese must slip officials money to register a car, obtain an
identification certificate or have a phone installed.  To sell goods to a state
enterprise, companies agree to kick back 5% to 10% of the contract price.
Customers sometimes even have to bribe banks to withdraw funds from their own
accounts.
	"every time the police blow the whistle, you pay," says a Vietnamese
living overseas who runs serveral joint ventures in Ho Chi Minh City.  He says
corruption is damaging business.  "I just don't know what they are going to do
about. "
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