For example, even though her film featured interviews with such Vietnamese leaders as General Giap and the late Pham Van Dong, the former defense minister and prime minister respectively, copies are seized by customs in Hanoi. It takes a week to get the dubs back which circulate through various layers of bureaucracy seeking to stop the flow of pornography and other so-called social evils. The old hard-liners are still in power and there is continuing tension between the modernizers, free marketeers, and Communist Party aparatchiks who fear what happened to the Soviet Union could happen to them. When I was in Vietnam, the Party named a new First Secretary, reportedly a military politician. The country remains committed to blocking political pluralism and western-style democracy.
Human rights are a problem for dissidents and others who run afoul of well-enforced rules.
The propagandistic Voice of Vietnam blares from loudspeakers in the street but it is not clear who is listening. When I asked a government official if the United States has raised human rights concerns, I was told that in light of all that was done to the people during the war, Washington is in no position to lecture Vietnam on that issue. Who could disagree, even though I know there is repression and political prisoners. I was also told about growing corruption within the party and the business sector. The power struggle at the top seems to have produced a contradictory set of polices with foreign investment while at the same time making it difficult for foreigners to make money.