Edmund Malesky Quoted on Vietnam's Land Management
Shootout Makes Land Disputes Vietnam’s Priority
07/11/2012
Nick Heath, with assistance from Nguyen Kieu Giang, Diep Ngoc Pham, Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen and K. Oanh Ha in Hanoi,
Bloomberg
First came the police and men in uniforms, then the beatings and the bulldozers, said Nguyen Thi Kiem. Within hours, her home and 165 others had been razed -- four generations of rice farms reduced to flattened earth.
“They came and forced us off,” said Kiem of the police and other officials who ejected residents of her village on the outskirts of Hanoi on April 24 to make way for a new suburb. “That is my home they are taking away. Now I have nothing.”
Five weeks later, Kiem had joined hundreds of other evicted farmers from around the country to camp in the rain outside government offices in the capital, fighting land clearances they don’t understand and that are often beset by allegations of corruption or unfair compensation. The protests have become a priority for Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, superseding labor strikes, rising prices and bankruptcies that have pulled the currency down 20 percent in four years.
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Edmund Malesky can comment on political development in Vietnam and China, as well as comparative political economy in Southeast Asia. He also can provide insight into the choices underlying the decisions of foreign investors and thereby the globalization debate, especially in regard to the discussion of "sweatshops" in developing countries.
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