Word: dais
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When police came to Nguyen Van Dai's door on Feb. 8, the Vietnamese human-rights lawyer thought he was in for a routine questioning session. After all, police had summoned the high-profile dissident at least five times in the previous six months to grill him about his educational seminars on democracy. But this time was different. Dai was taken to his local People's Committee, where about 200 murmuring citizens were waiting to denounce him for crimes against society. One by one, members of the audience, most of them elderly, shuffled to the microphone to criticize Dai...
...Dai's ordeal sounds like a flashback from the days when Vietnam's Communist Party ruled nearly every aspect of citizens' lives, and public denunciations were used to shame the bourgeoisie and anyone questioning the party line. Such ritual ceremonies-called dau to, literally "fighting and criticism"- faded as Hanoi became more adept at stifling dissent and economic reforms loosened controls on everyday life. But with a new generation of activists like Dai agitating for change, dau to seems to be making a comeback. Out of the dozen dissidents arrested over the past four months, at least three have endured...
...long as this p.r. campaign lasts, Vietnam's denouncements look set to continue, although their effectiveness may prove limited. As Dai pointed out before his arrest, most of the accusers at his denouncement were over 60, many of them war veterans: "The reason [authorities] didn't invite young people is they fear they would have laughed at the process." But as Dai well knows, Vietnam has harsher ways of dealing with dissent than a roomful of angry denouncers...
...Dai's tale sounds 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...
...Western-style" democracy as messy and debilitating, while trumpeting the "Vietnamese style" of one-party rule as a guarantor of wealth and peace. "They're saying, 'This is how we do democracy, and it's a really good process... and it's something to be proud of,'" says Gainsborough. Dai, who told TIME before his arrest that he found many members of Vietnam's younger generation hungry for democratic change, would disagree. He pointed out that most of the accusers at his denouncement ceremony were over 60, many of them veterans of what's known here as the American...