Word: crackdowns
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...Human-rights groups say the spate of public denunciations is part of a political crackdown that is the harshest in 20 years-and one that the government wants everyone to know about. In the past, Hanoi would often arrest and prosecute its opponents with little fanfare. But during the current wave of cases, foreign and local journalists have been allowed to view court hearings via televised feed, while the state-controlled media has run lengthy screeds against the defendants. This about-face is a reaction by authorities to modern realities, says Martin Gainsborough, a political scientist and Vietnam expert...
...while the crackdown on dissidents has been condemned internationally, there's been little public outrage at home. Right now, life has never looked better for most Vietnamese: the economy has grown by more than 7% a year over the past decade, second in Asia only to China's, and this year's entry into the World Trade Organization has touched off a flood of foreign investment. A 2006 Gallup International survey called Vietnam the world's most optimistic country for the fourth year in a row, with 94% of urban residents predicting life would improve in 2007. As long...
...like a recollection from the old Vietnam, back when the Communist Party ruled nearly every aspect of citizens' lives and public denunciations were used routinely to keep dissenters in line. About a dozen dissidents have been arrested or exiled in what human rights grups call Vietnam's harshest political crackdown in 20 years. Of these, at least four have endured public humiliation ceremonies. "They want to frighten us," Dai explains. "They use the people and our neighbors to try to shame us, so they don't have to use the courts." Not that the courts are off-limits. Soon after...
...reflection of a changing Vietnam. Nearly 60% of the population of 85 million is under 30 years old; they are increasingly Internet-literate, eager to join the global community and able to access news and information from the outside world. There's no point in downplaying a political crackdown because people will find out about it anyway, according to Martin Gainsborough, a political scientist and Vietnam expert at the University of Bristol in the U.K. Instead, the government is trying "to continually remind the public that these people are beyond the pale," Gainsborough says. "They need to keep the dissidents...
...week on, and the mood is changing in districts like Tebbaneh, a poor slum-like quarter in Tripoli long receptive to the clarion call of Islamic extremism. Television footage of seemingly indiscriminate army shelling of the Nahr al-Bared camp, home to 40,000 people, and a crackdown against Islamists in Tripoli have soured sympathy for the government's bid to eradicate Fatah al-Islam...