Vietnam rural scenes
Music
00:00
Workers in rice padis
WILLIAMS: Vietnam is a country of enduring mystique a gentle land whose people proved tough enough to defeat some of the worlds great powers.
00:19
Beneath its romantic veneer, Vietnam is facing powerful new pressures from within. As in China, Vietnams Communist Party is trying to keep power while unleashing a free market economy and thats proving harder by the day.
00:35
Dissident
DISSIDENT: Most Vietnamese are starting to understand that dictatorship means corruption, corruption means the loss of all basic human rights -- so they are very angry.
00:57
Saigon night shots
Music
WILLIAMS: This is a journey to the Vietnam behind the tourist brochures, a look at the human cost of challenging one of the worlds last one party states.
01:18
Lam Le Dzung directs directs film
On a Saigon soccer field Lam Le Dzung directs what he hopes will be Vietnams next movie blockbuster, a sports flick with a youth twist.
01:51
LAM LE DZUNG: This movie is called U14 the Dream Team. Its about childrens sport, criminal activity and humour.
02:03
WILLIAMS: Despite its gentle theme, Dream Team is part of a revolution. Like the rest of Vietnams economy, the film business is being told to shake off the shackles of socialism and war and to start seeking a profit.
02:13
Williams with actors
LAM LE DZUNG: Of late we have assigned a smaller proportion to war movies and a larger proportion to other themes
02:31
Dzung
about pressing issues in life and social evils. In order to abolish such social evils we need to use interesting films to convey our ideas to a larger audience.
02:42
Film clip from Bar Girls
Music
WILLIAMS: Making money means bums on seats and Vietnams filmmakers are starting to get the picture.
02:52
Male actor: Shes cool.
Female Actor: Mom, let me rest a bit.
Male Actor 2: What did you say? Get out. Dont make me shout the second time Get out.
WILLIAMS: In an uncompromising look at lifes seedy side the recently released Bar Girls follows three young women through the haze of pimps, prostitution and alcohol.
03:00
Heroin leads to HIV and eventually despair and death, yet Bar Girls has been a box office smash, earning almost one million dollars Vietnams highest grossing film. And yet this is still propaganda. A government approved lesson on the addictive evils of capitalism.
03:22
Bar Girls clip continues
LE HOANG: Apart from propaganda, a film is also humanistic.
03:51
Hoang
Therefore the message is to avoid these women -- but at the same time there is empathy for them. We cant talk about them the way we talk about American soldiers.
03:54
Hoang looking at actors photos
WILLIAMS: Le Hoang is now selecting stars for his Bar Girls sequel, a happier tale he promises.
04:11
Hoang: Shes okay maybe she could do it.
04:17
WILLIAMS: Like the rest of Vietnams society the film industry is being encouraged to seek free market money without an accompanying freedom of speech.
Hoang
LE HOANG: The government only censors the script if it funds the film. Privately made films have complete freedom. But the government censors all finished films, as happens in every country.
04:30
Madame Ngat in office
WILLIAMS: What the censors allow is decided here in the Hanoi office of this woman, poet, writer and senior Party member Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat helps screen film projects and while prostitutes are in, politics are not.
04:41
Madame Ngat
MADAME NGAT: In Vietnam theres a saying that children shouldnt criticise their parents difficulties. Vietnam is a very poor country, but we love our country and we dont criticise it. Some people took great responsibility on themselves to free the country -- and theyre now rebuilding.
04:56
Music
Exteriors internet café
WILLIAMS: The internet offers a growing number of Vietnamese the chance to criticise those running the country. Its the only media free of government control but the government is clamping down even on this.
05:26
Music
Photo of Pham Hong Son
On March 27, 2002, Pham Hong Son was arrested after translating a document called What is Democracy? off the U.S. State Departments website. Son, a doctor, emailed it to friends and party members. Hes now serving five years jail with three years house arrest to follow. His official crime? Espionage.
05:47
Vu Thuy Ha
VU THUY HA: [Sons wife] The main reason he did that was to find out what democracy is. My husband had heard a lot about democracy but he didnt understand exactly what it is.
06:14
Vu Thuy Ha with children
WILLIAMS: Sons wife, Vu Thuy Ha is watched constantly, so we had to meet her and her two sons secretly at a friends house.
06:30
VU THUY HA: Our daily life is very difficult. Previously we lived very happily as a family, but when my husband was arrested our life was suddenly turned upside down. Its hard for the three of us financially and also emotionally.
06:40
Williams with Vu Thuy Ha
WILLIAMS: Ha tells the boys their father is away working, but they ask why he doesnt phone home as he normally would.
07:06
One day soon theyll have to be told the truth, yet despite the hardship, Ha supports her husbands quest.
Vu Thuy Ha
VU THUY HA: I want my husband to stop doing that work so that our family may find peace -- but deep down in my heart and my thoughts, I understand him and I share his feelings. I understand that for society to develop there has to be democracy -- and to have democracy there has to be research to find out about it.
07:22
Madame Ngat in office
WILLIAMS: Madame Ngat, the government censor, was the only high ranking party member who agreed to speak to us. She says her government does not imprison critics like Son.
07:50
Madame Ngat
MADAME NGAT: That isnt correct -- no one is jailed for that reason. I know people who have conflicting opinions to us, and live happily in Hanoi with their families. They are not jailed for anything.
08:01
Music
Photos of political prisoners
WILLIAMS: Son is not alone. According to Vietnamese Human Rights groups there are about one hundred and sixty political prisoners in Vietnam some in jail for life. In a new crackdown on internet use, thirteen more dissidents have recently been jailed for up to twelve years, many while simply sending anti government e-mails. They include 32 year old lawyer Le Chi Quang. Human rights workers say his life is now threatened by an untreated kidney disease.
08:26
Madame Ngat
WILLIAMS: Well, we know for a fact that there are people in jail here and if theyre not in jail for criticising the party, what are they in jail for?
09:04
MADAME NGAT: They have never been jailed. If you look at problems, then you should look with good will and combine to solve them. You shouldnt just focus on the faults or difficulties and criticise the country. I strongly object to that sort of behaviour.
09:11
Night traffic shots
WILLIAMS: To reach dissidents who are still free requires weeks of planning. Avoiding our government minders and undercover police proved easier at night.
09:38
Duong Thu Huong reading
Duong Thu Huong was a Communist Party member until she started writing novels on government corruption and the abuse of power. She writes with inside knowledge, which is probably why they once jailed her.
09:54
Duong Thu Huong
DUONG THU HUONG: I cant believe in the government at all, because they are extremely mean and cowardly. They have no dignity. I understand them so well -- theyre all now vile people. The good people who upheld ideals have all died off. Their successors today are all mean and cunning thieves.
10:08
Archival propaganda film
Music
WILLIAMS: These first propaganda films glorify Vietnams diehard nationalism. They defeated the French fifty years ago, then the Americans almost thirty years ago. Victories that earned the Communist Party enormous loyalty, but some who survived the front lines like Duong, now question the Partys commitment to the dream of an egalitarian new nation.
10:43
DUONG THU HUONG: Because most of the people in my generation
11:15
Duong Thu Huong
died in the anti-American war all of those who survived became mandarins. Each of them has buildings to rent to foreigners and a lot of wealth. I myself choose to be a rebel. I can die, but I cant be dishonoured. To collaborate with mean people is very humiliating. I cant accept a mean, humiliated life. Thats my revenge for those who died unjustly and in vain -- in the anti-American war.
11:22
Rural scenes
Music
WILLIAMS: Even just outside the capital, Hanoi, many Vietnamese still have a peasant lifestyle. Its for people like these the Communist Party first formed, but is today more interested in plundering the spoils of free market reforms.
12:09
Ducks being herded into rice padi
DUONG THU HUONG: People in power are involved in drug trafficking and smuggling and use the regimes power to grab peoples properties.
12:30
Duong Thu Huong
They embezzle public funds and national assets to monopolise the business market.
12:41
Music
Workers in rice padis
WILLIAMS: In the countryside, government corruption and land grabs by officials are common. Protests are savagely repressed, so opposition groups have been in hiding.
12:57
Slow motion walk down corridor
Now, though, there has been a change in tactics. Tonight Vietnams pro-democracy movement reveals itself for the first time. Its called Viet Tan.
13:16
Dissident
DISSIDENT: I am a member of Vietnam Canh Tan Cach Mang Dang -- or Viet Tan. In English our name is Revolutionary Party to Reform Vietnam.
13:27
Williams with dissident
WILLIAMS: Viet Tan has thousands of members across the country and offshore. For security, one man is selected to speak, disguised to protect his life.
13:41
Dissident
DISSIDENT: If I am arrested after you have left I could be secretly killed.
13:51
WILLIAMS: This is Viet Tans first public statement.
13:56
DISSIDENT: The people have realised the Communist Party has deceived them, exploited them, taken their wealth to feed their pockets. All the privileges and vested benefits such as housing, international aid, foreign investment are in the hands of a few, while the vast majority live in poverty.
14:00
Music
Canals
WILLIAMS: Viet Tan is organised into grassroot cells, just like those used against the Americans by the Communists during the war. It chronicles Party corruption, collects information on arrests, mobilises the youth and claims the secret support of some in government. Its goal? Multi-party democracy, the rule of law.
14:27
Dissident
DISSIDENT: Many foreigners who do business in Vietnam fail. They say Vietnam is without laws -- that an absence of stability and order makes it impossible to do business. The obstacles to democracy arent just a few groups of people, but the entire machinery of the regime.
14:55
Williams with dissident
WILLIAMS: The party says that they won the war, they bring economic prosperity for everybody. Whats wrong with that?
15:16
Dissident
DISSIDENT: Vietnamese people want a change because the Communist Party has deprived them of basic rights -- freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom in conducting business, equality in all social relations.
15:24
Dancers with baby dolls
Music
WILLIAMS: But the fact remains, nothing happens here without government permission. The closest most Vietnamese get to critical public comment is a play like this one.
15:46
Actor in play
ACTOR IN PLAY: We must try to make the next generation more beautiful better than the last one.
15:55
WILLIAMS: A traditional tale, it tells the story of how a person can be born handsome and kind but society will determine if hes honest.
16:02
ACTOR IN PLAY: If you want to know if this baby will become an artist or a robber whether full of love or anger it all comes from the heart.
16:10
Music
WILLIAMS: In a country as corrupt as many now find Vietnam, the message is clear.
16:25
Nguyen Hung Long with actors
But director Nguyen Hung Long says to avoid the censors, criticism has to be indirect.
16:34
Nguyen Hung Long
NGUYEN HUNG LONG: This is something people will feel for themselves. Because this a folk tale in which people can make sense of the present time. I dont want to be explicit how can you say who is good and who is bad? So people use a folktale to make sense of the present.
16:41
Military parade
WILLIAMS: Vietnams present is very much captive to its immediate, heroic past. Each morning in Hanoi, people come from across the country for a ceremony of national pride. Increasingly, though, Vietnamese oppose the absolute authority of Communist one party rule.
DISSIDENT: We strongly believe that in the near future
17:08
Dissident
the people will unite with us in a revolution to bring back freedom and democracy -- and to reform Vietnam, so as to make Vietnam proud before the world.
17:45
Military parade
WILLIAMS: Others warn it will be a tough fight.
DUONG THU HUONG: The regime resorts to the barrel of the gun to keep power and also theres the ignorance, lack of knowledge and cowardice of the people - the people dont have the habit of fighting against the government.
17:58
Duong Thu Huong
I think the government will try all ways -- all the meanest methods to survive as long as possible.
18:17
Vu Thuy Ha with children
WILLIAMS: That will likely mean more arrests, more lives torn apart, Ha will have to wait five years to see her husband Son again.
VU THUY HA: I believe he must come home.
18:28
Vu Thuy Ha
I think the future will be very long, but I think everything will change. As my husband kept telling me, the present may be difficult but the future is ahead of us.
18:40
Music
Photo of Son
WILLIAMS: Its hard to imagine the end of socialist rule in Vietnam any time soon. But the more individual liberties are repressed in the name of stability, the more pressure therell be for change.
19:04
Vietnam Dissidents
Reporter: Evan Williams
Camera: Geoffrey Lye
Sound: Kate Graham
Editor: Garth Thomas
Producer: Mary Ann Jolley
Music
00:00
Workers in rice padis
WILLIAMS: Vietnam is a country of enduring mystique a gentle land whose people proved tough enough to defeat some of the worlds great powers.
00:19
Beneath its romantic veneer, Vietnam is facing powerful new pressures from within. As in China, Vietnams Communist Party is trying to keep power while unleashing a free market economy and thats proving harder by the day.
00:35
Dissident
DISSIDENT: Most Vietnamese are starting to understand that dictatorship means corruption, corruption means the loss of all basic human rights -- so they are very angry.
00:57
Saigon night shots
Music
WILLIAMS: This is a journey to the Vietnam behind the tourist brochures, a look at the human cost of challenging one of the worlds last one party states.
01:18
Lam Le Dzung directs directs film
On a Saigon soccer field Lam Le Dzung directs what he hopes will be Vietnams next movie blockbuster, a sports flick with a youth twist.
01:51
LAM LE DZUNG: This movie is called U14 the Dream Team. Its about childrens sport, criminal activity and humour.
02:03
WILLIAMS: Despite its gentle theme, Dream Team is part of a revolution. Like the rest of Vietnams economy, the film business is being told to shake off the shackles of socialism and war and to start seeking a profit.
02:13
Williams with actors
LAM LE DZUNG: Of late we have assigned a smaller proportion to war movies and a larger proportion to other themes
02:31
Dzung
about pressing issues in life and social evils. In order to abolish such social evils we need to use interesting films to convey our ideas to a larger audience.
02:42
Film clip from Bar Girls
Music
WILLIAMS: Making money means bums on seats and Vietnams filmmakers are starting to get the picture.
02:52
Male actor: Shes cool.
Female Actor: Mom, let me rest a bit.
Male Actor 2: What did you say? Get out. Dont make me shout the second time Get out.
WILLIAMS: In an uncompromising look at lifes seedy side the recently released Bar Girls follows three young women through the haze of pimps, prostitution and alcohol.
03:00
Heroin leads to HIV and eventually despair and death, yet Bar Girls has been a box office smash, earning almost one million dollars Vietnams highest grossing film. And yet this is still propaganda. A government approved lesson on the addictive evils of capitalism.
03:22
Bar Girls clip continues
LE HOANG: Apart from propaganda, a film is also humanistic.
03:51
Hoang
Therefore the message is to avoid these women -- but at the same time there is empathy for them. We cant talk about them the way we talk about American soldiers.
03:54
Hoang looking at actors photos
WILLIAMS: Le Hoang is now selecting stars for his Bar Girls sequel, a happier tale he promises.
04:11
Hoang: Shes okay maybe she could do it.
04:17
WILLIAMS: Like the rest of Vietnams society the film industry is being encouraged to seek free market money without an accompanying freedom of speech.
Hoang
LE HOANG: The government only censors the script if it funds the film. Privately made films have complete freedom. But the government censors all finished films, as happens in every country.
04:30
Madame Ngat in office
WILLIAMS: What the censors allow is decided here in the Hanoi office of this woman, poet, writer and senior Party member Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat helps screen film projects and while prostitutes are in, politics are not.
04:41
Madame Ngat
MADAME NGAT: In Vietnam theres a saying that children shouldnt criticise their parents difficulties. Vietnam is a very poor country, but we love our country and we dont criticise it. Some people took great responsibility on themselves to free the country -- and theyre now rebuilding.
04:56
Music
Exteriors internet café
WILLIAMS: The internet offers a growing number of Vietnamese the chance to criticise those running the country. Its the only media free of government control but the government is clamping down even on this.
05:26
Music
Photo of Pham Hong Son
On March 27, 2002, Pham Hong Son was arrested after translating a document called What is Democracy? off the U.S. State Departments website. Son, a doctor, emailed it to friends and party members. Hes now serving five years jail with three years house arrest to follow. His official crime? Espionage.
05:47
Vu Thuy Ha
VU THUY HA: [Sons wife] The main reason he did that was to find out what democracy is. My husband had heard a lot about democracy but he didnt understand exactly what it is.
06:14
Vu Thuy Ha with children
WILLIAMS: Sons wife, Vu Thuy Ha is watched constantly, so we had to meet her and her two sons secretly at a friends house.
06:30
VU THUY HA: Our daily life is very difficult. Previously we lived very happily as a family, but when my husband was arrested our life was suddenly turned upside down. Its hard for the three of us financially and also emotionally.
06:40
Williams with Vu Thuy Ha
WILLIAMS: Ha tells the boys their father is away working, but they ask why he doesnt phone home as he normally would.
07:06
One day soon theyll have to be told the truth, yet despite the hardship, Ha supports her husbands quest.
Vu Thuy Ha
VU THUY HA: I want my husband to stop doing that work so that our family may find peace -- but deep down in my heart and my thoughts, I understand him and I share his feelings. I understand that for society to develop there has to be democracy -- and to have democracy there has to be research to find out about it.
07:22
Madame Ngat in office
WILLIAMS: Madame Ngat, the government censor, was the only high ranking party member who agreed to speak to us. She says her government does not imprison critics like Son.
07:50
Madame Ngat
MADAME NGAT: That isnt correct -- no one is jailed for that reason. I know people who have conflicting opinions to us, and live happily in Hanoi with their families. They are not jailed for anything.
08:01
Music
Photos of political prisoners
WILLIAMS: Son is not alone. According to Vietnamese Human Rights groups there are about one hundred and sixty political prisoners in Vietnam some in jail for life. In a new crackdown on internet use, thirteen more dissidents have recently been jailed for up to twelve years, many while simply sending anti government e-mails. They include 32 year old lawyer Le Chi Quang. Human rights workers say his life is now threatened by an untreated kidney disease.
08:26
Madame Ngat
WILLIAMS: Well, we know for a fact that there are people in jail here and if theyre not in jail for criticising the party, what are they in jail for?
09:04
MADAME NGAT: They have never been jailed. If you look at problems, then you should look with good will and combine to solve them. You shouldnt just focus on the faults or difficulties and criticise the country. I strongly object to that sort of behaviour.
09:11
Night traffic shots
WILLIAMS: To reach dissidents who are still free requires weeks of planning. Avoiding our government minders and undercover police proved easier at night.
09:38
Duong Thu Huong reading
Duong Thu Huong was a Communist Party member until she started writing novels on government corruption and the abuse of power. She writes with inside knowledge, which is probably why they once jailed her.
09:54
Duong Thu Huong
DUONG THU HUONG: I cant believe in the government at all, because they are extremely mean and cowardly. They have no dignity. I understand them so well -- theyre all now vile people. The good people who upheld ideals have all died off. Their successors today are all mean and cunning thieves.
10:08
Archival propaganda film
Music
WILLIAMS: These first propaganda films glorify Vietnams diehard nationalism. They defeated the French fifty years ago, then the Americans almost thirty years ago. Victories that earned the Communist Party enormous loyalty, but some who survived the front lines like Duong, now question the Partys commitment to the dream of an egalitarian new nation.
10:43
DUONG THU HUONG: Because most of the people in my generation
11:15
Duong Thu Huong
died in the anti-American war all of those who survived became mandarins. Each of them has buildings to rent to foreigners and a lot of wealth. I myself choose to be a rebel. I can die, but I cant be dishonoured. To collaborate with mean people is very humiliating. I cant accept a mean, humiliated life. Thats my revenge for those who died unjustly and in vain -- in the anti-American war.
11:22
Rural scenes
Music
WILLIAMS: Even just outside the capital, Hanoi, many Vietnamese still have a peasant lifestyle. Its for people like these the Communist Party first formed, but is today more interested in plundering the spoils of free market reforms.
12:09
Ducks being herded into rice padi
DUONG THU HUONG: People in power are involved in drug trafficking and smuggling and use the regimes power to grab peoples properties.
12:30
Duong Thu Huong
They embezzle public funds and national assets to monopolise the business market.
12:41
Music
Workers in rice padis
WILLIAMS: In the countryside, government corruption and land grabs by officials are common. Protests are savagely repressed, so opposition groups have been in hiding.
12:57
Slow motion walk down corridor
Now, though, there has been a change in tactics. Tonight Vietnams pro-democracy movement reveals itself for the first time. Its called Viet Tan.
13:16
Dissident
DISSIDENT: I am a member of Vietnam Canh Tan Cach Mang Dang -- or Viet Tan. In English our name is Revolutionary Party to Reform Vietnam.
13:27
Williams with dissident
WILLIAMS: Viet Tan has thousands of members across the country and offshore. For security, one man is selected to speak, disguised to protect his life.
13:41
Dissident
DISSIDENT: If I am arrested after you have left I could be secretly killed.
13:51
WILLIAMS: This is Viet Tans first public statement.
13:56
DISSIDENT: The people have realised the Communist Party has deceived them, exploited them, taken their wealth to feed their pockets. All the privileges and vested benefits such as housing, international aid, foreign investment are in the hands of a few, while the vast majority live in poverty.
14:00
Music
Canals
WILLIAMS: Viet Tan is organised into grassroot cells, just like those used against the Americans by the Communists during the war. It chronicles Party corruption, collects information on arrests, mobilises the youth and claims the secret support of some in government. Its goal? Multi-party democracy, the rule of law.
14:27
Dissident
DISSIDENT: Many foreigners who do business in Vietnam fail. They say Vietnam is without laws -- that an absence of stability and order makes it impossible to do business. The obstacles to democracy arent just a few groups of people, but the entire machinery of the regime.
14:55
Williams with dissident
WILLIAMS: The party says that they won the war, they bring economic prosperity for everybody. Whats wrong with that?
15:16
Dissident
DISSIDENT: Vietnamese people want a change because the Communist Party has deprived them of basic rights -- freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom in conducting business, equality in all social relations.
15:24
Dancers with baby dolls
Music
WILLIAMS: But the fact remains, nothing happens here without government permission. The closest most Vietnamese get to critical public comment is a play like this one.
15:46
Actor in play
ACTOR IN PLAY: We must try to make the next generation more beautiful better than the last one.
15:55
WILLIAMS: A traditional tale, it tells the story of how a person can be born handsome and kind but society will determine if hes honest.
16:02
ACTOR IN PLAY: If you want to know if this baby will become an artist or a robber whether full of love or anger it all comes from the heart.
16:10
Music
WILLIAMS: In a country as corrupt as many now find Vietnam, the message is clear.
16:25
Nguyen Hung Long with actors
But director Nguyen Hung Long says to avoid the censors, criticism has to be indirect.
16:34
Nguyen Hung Long
NGUYEN HUNG LONG: This is something people will feel for themselves. Because this a folk tale in which people can make sense of the present time. I dont want to be explicit how can you say who is good and who is bad? So people use a folktale to make sense of the present.
16:41
Military parade
WILLIAMS: Vietnams present is very much captive to its immediate, heroic past. Each morning in Hanoi, people come from across the country for a ceremony of national pride. Increasingly, though, Vietnamese oppose the absolute authority of Communist one party rule.
DISSIDENT: We strongly believe that in the near future
17:08
Dissident
the people will unite with us in a revolution to bring back freedom and democracy -- and to reform Vietnam, so as to make Vietnam proud before the world.
17:45
Military parade
WILLIAMS: Others warn it will be a tough fight.
DUONG THU HUONG: The regime resorts to the barrel of the gun to keep power and also theres the ignorance, lack of knowledge and cowardice of the people - the people dont have the habit of fighting against the government.
17:58
Duong Thu Huong
I think the government will try all ways -- all the meanest methods to survive as long as possible.
18:17
Vu Thuy Ha with children
WILLIAMS: That will likely mean more arrests, more lives torn apart, Ha will have to wait five years to see her husband Son again.
VU THUY HA: I believe he must come home.
18:28
Vu Thuy Ha
I think the future will be very long, but I think everything will change. As my husband kept telling me, the present may be difficult but the future is ahead of us.
18:40
Music
Photo of Son
WILLIAMS: Its hard to imagine the end of socialist rule in Vietnam any time soon. But the more individual liberties are repressed in the name of stability, the more pressure therell be for change.
19:04
Vietnam Dissidents
Reporter: Evan Williams
Camera: Geoffrey Lye
Sound: Kate Graham
Editor: Garth Thomas
Producer: Mary Ann Jolley