Retaliation: Peter Doan Van Vuon's wife examines the rubble of their demolished home. |
In Vietnam, Peter Doan Van Vuon, a farmer who fought
back when police came to confiscate his farm, is widely regarded as a hero.
His neighbors have actually considered building a statue in his honor. In the
United States, he would almost certainly be dead.
The strike team that assaulted Vuon’s 40-hectare fish farm
in Hai Phong on January 5 did demolish the family’s modest two-story home,
forcing them to live in a makeshift shelter fashioned from a tarp. On previous
performance it’s reasonable to say that their counterparts in the employ of the
Regime in Washington would have made sure to incinerate the family as well.
The raiders – roughly 100 police and soldiers -- didn’t
expect resistance when they arrived to evict the 49-year-old Vuon and his
family and seize the property. Vuon’s wife, Ngyuen, had just returned from dropping
off the kids at school when the strike team arrived. Rather than submitting
meekly to the invaders, the Vuon family fought back, using improvised pellet
guns and land mines. Nobody was killed or seriously injured, but the armored
assailants – six of whom suffered trivial wounds – were forced to retreat.
In the United States, Vuon -- assuming that he survived the fire-bombing that appears
to be the Regime’s preferred tactical endgame in standoffs of this kind -- would have been execrated as a would-be "cop killer." Although he and several relatives were arrested, the
state-run media in Communist Vietnam “have openly sympathized with him in
investigative reports,” notes the AP. “Their dispatches have alleged that Hai
Phong officials lied about details of the eviction. They also have said the
family was cheated in 1993 when they were given a lease of only 14 years
instead of what should have been 20 years.”
More remarkable still is the fact that Prime Minister Nguyen
Tan Dung intervened to investigate the matter. After the inquiry concluded that local authorities broke the law by attempting to
confiscate Vuon’s land, he ordered that the officials responsible for the
destruction of the family’s home be suspended and investigated for possible
criminal prosecution.
In Vietnam, the government claims ownership of all land
while issuing long-term land grants to farmers. In 1993, Vuon used his life
savings to buy and reclaim a small tract of swampland, eventually establishing
a small but profitable fish farm.
In 2009, the Hai Phong city
government suddenly “discovered” that Vuon’s land grant had expired and announced
its intention to confiscate the property without compensation in order to sell
it to land developers. When Vuon filed a lawsuit against the seizure, the court
promised to let them keep the land if he dropped the case. This was a ruse:
After Vuon dropped the suit, the city government initiated seizure proceedings.
Deprived of any legal means to protect their property, Vuon and his family
began making preparations to defend their land by force.
The Vuon family's new home. |
From the perspective of their rulers, Vuon and his family
were engaged in a seditious conspiracy, particularly when it’s understood that
they are not only capitalists but devout Catholics.
At a time when Vietnam’s
economy is afflicted with the highest inflation rate in Asia and confrontations
between small farmers and government officials are increasingly common, Vuon’s
armed defiance is a spark that could ignite a widespread conflagration.
However, rather than simply extinguishing Vuon outright, Communist government of
Vietnam has actually examined his grievances on their merits.
It is impossible to believe that any affiliate or subdivision of the U.S. Government would be so conciliatory.
Similar developments are taking place in mainland China,
which like Vietnam is ruled by a one-party State that is Marxist in its
professed ideology but corporatist in practice.
Gu Kul, who used to own and operate an automotive parts
business in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has been victimized by
China’s predatory corporate elite. A few years ago, local urban planners,
seeking to enhance their revenue stream, ordered the seizure of Gu’s 13-acre
commercial property. In short order, a fleet of bulldozers arrived, protected
by a small army of police and hired thugs.
“I had to look on as bulldozers demolished my property,” Gu
recounted to Der Spiegel. Not
satisfied with the trivial, paltry compensation for the destruction of a
profitable and growing business and the theft of his property, Gu filed a legal
challenge under recently enacted national legislation that supposedly limits
seizures by local governments.
In short order, Gu found himself being constantly trailed by
black-clad mercenaries in blacked-out SUVs. Their intentions were as
transparent as their mirrored sunglasses were opaque. While Gu has managed to
avoid capture, more than a few others have been kidnapped, tortured, and killed
for objecting to the ongoing land grab – and the revolt is propagating itself
across rural China.
Yang Youde used to own a thriving cotton farm in Yuhan. In
2009, local commissars, coveting the fertile land and well-stocked trout
streams, announced their intention to seize the property. After Yang filed a
legal petition to protest the planned confiscation, police descended on his
home and hauled him away to a “black jail” where he was beaten and tortured.
“They strung me up by my hands and put out cigarettes on my skin,” he recalled
in an interview with the Telegraph of
London.
Yang survived his time in police custody; Xue Jingbo of
Wukan, a fishing village of 10,000, wasn’t so fortunate. During late 2011, a
revolt erupted in the village over land confiscation, and Xue was designated to
negotiate on behalf of the population. Instead of listening to the village’s
complaints, the local government ordered Xue’s arrest. While in police custody,
Xue died very quickly of what officials insisted were “natural causes.” His
body was never returned to his family.
Rather than mourning, the locals organized. Thousands of
protesters gathered in the village square to demand an investigation of Xue’s
death and an end to the corrupt practice of seizing land for the benefit of
politically connected corporate interests. Anticipating that the local
government would demand reinforcements, the population erected roadblocks and
other barricades at the village entrances. Using cellphones and social media,
protesters contacted the BBC and other international media sources seeking to
publicize the village’s plight and Xue’s murder.
After news of the protests reached a global audience last
December, China’s Public Security Bureau – that nation’s equivalent of the
American FBI or Russian KGB – shut down media access to Wukan and closed off
most internet links to the village.
The local government, alarmed by the extent
and intensity of the protests, was actually forced to flee for two weeks. Upon
their return the city officials promised to halt the ongoing land grab and
investigate allegations of official corruption – for whatever a promise of
that kind may be worth.
Unfortunately, rather than simply withdrawing their consent to be ruled, the people of Wukan agreed to a series of "democratic reforms," including the appointment of a protester as a local commissar. Their exemplary defiance may have a healthier impact that the useless concessions they received.
In early February, more than 5,000 people took to the
streets of East and West Pahne Villages in Zhejiang Province to protest land
seizures by local officials. The villagers became aware of the seizures only
after construction began on some of the stolen land.
"Officials from the village sold land,” explained
local resident Lu Yeqin. “This land originally belonged to the villagers. After
it was sold, the [villagers] were not given any money for it. The villagers are
upset, and after all, this land was passed down through their family business.
They rely on the land for their livelihood, but now it has been sold."
As happened in Wukan, local Communist Party officials took
flight, regrouping in secret locations to await instructions from Beijing. Many
village activists are likewise seeking intervention by the central government
in the mistaken hope that this will protect them from the corruption of local
functionaries.
Tragically, they don’t understand that the land grabs are a
result of central government intervention: In the teeth of a catastrophic
economic downturn, China’s
rulers – like their counterparts in Vietnam -- are frantically seizing land and
adding to the commercial and residential real estate glut in the hope of
boosting the GDP.
“A large portion of China’s estimated 100,000 or so public
protests each year are driven by rage over compulsory evictions,” notes the Telegraph. This is the sort of thing
that would never happen in the United States, of course – except for the fact
that it happens all the time.
As the Wall Street
Journal has pointed out, Chinese subjects who refuse to surrender their
homes to the land-grabbers “are known as `nail households,' since their homes
are sometimes left stranded in the middle of busy construction sites. More
often, however, they are driven away by paid thugs."
That description summons memories of New
London, Connecticut resident Lauren Canario, who was kidnapped by rented
thugs – that is, officers of the New London police
department -- for refusing to vacate property that had been stolen through
eminent domain on behalf of a federally subsidized "public/private partnership"
(that is, fascist entity) called the New London Development Corporation (NLDC).
Lauren was not a trespasser; she was visiting the
property with the permission of its owner. However, the NDLC had
decided to steal the land and give it to the Pfizer Corporation,
and this act of vulgar larceny received the
benediction of the Supreme Court. Lauren was arrested,
imprisoned for months, and -- in a touch that would have earned the
admiration of Soviet or Chinese commissars -- repeatedly subjected to
psychological evaluation.
The "nail households" were hammered down, the Pfizer plant
was quickly erected, and the expected kickbacks were delivered. Shortly thereafter the
economy collapsed and Pfizer decided to
shut down the facility and move its employees elsewhere, leaving behind a
rotting and useless building that had been constructed on stolen land.
This case is a mere snapshot of an ongoing national crime wave. Former real estate developer Don Corace writes in his recent book Government
Pirates: The Assault on Private Property Rights and How We Can Fight It: "Arrogant
and corrupt city and county officials -- with near limitless legal budgets ...
continue to align themselves with well-heeled developers, political cronies,
and major corporations to prey on the politically less powerful and
disenfranchised, particularly minority communities.”
Eminent domain "abuse" (a term that refers to the predictable
exercise of an innately illegitimate power) is just one of many ways that
property can be blatantly stolen through political means: "Through local
zoning and the regulation of wetlands and endangered species, governments take
property without compensating owners and also extort land and money in
return for approvals."
This is, of course, exactly the same racket being run by
local commissars in the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It is
interesting, and somewhat unsettling, that people to whom
private property may be a relatively new and exotic concept seem to have a
better understanding of what is happening than do their counterparts here in
the putative Land of the Free – and that they display more intrepidity in fighting for
their freedom than can be found here in the purported Home of the Brave.
Be sure to check out Republic magazine -- and sign up for your free digital subscription.
Dum Spiro, Pugno!
11 comments:
You're at our Blog: http://libertariansmile.wordpress.com/
Those zipperheads are making the big bad rough n' tumble, rugged individual, unique just like everyone else in corporate gear, Americans look bad. Where do they get the heart to stand up like that. They should caress their chains and sing songs of praise to corporate pimps. Dissent is terrorism. The government needs to do something about these gooks so we can feel safe again. Can we invade now?
The land grab is just a further sign that Leviathan, The State, cares not a whit about the people it robs, in the form of the taxes it steals to fund itself, to further rape and pillage. Only in America it seems they're more anxious than ever to kill the geese that lay the every diminishing golden eggs.
I really think that Peter Doan Van Vuon and family deserve some sort of recognition for their act of defiance in defense of liberty (whether or not they would recognize it as such). I'm sure that the same Amoricon flagwavers who mindlessly babble about America's founding ideals (without having a clue as to what those actually are) would in the same breath denounce Mr. Vuon as an anarcho-terrorist, and without a hint of irony.
So I guess the trick is to not leave any evidence of your defense.
The Western World regarded property unlike others.
I know Vietnam quite a bit. The Communist Party is not a political party the way we know a political party - it is The Mafia. They are the 'powers' in every aspect of the Vietnam society. You want to be in business and be successful at it, you have to be a member of the Party. Otherwise they crush you, confiscate whatever you have or they take your house, land, property, business.... all owned by the Party also called the State.
And there is a limited number of members to be allowed. You have to be approved, to be part of the establishment.
Wait a minute..... this sounds familiar....
Anonymous, how is that different than the party system in the US? If you do not grease the political wheels (donate to election coffers) your business, if you can get one started, will be quickly destroyed. Confiscation without remuneration happens in the US all the time unless you are from the moneyed class.
To: Anonymous at Feb 15th 10:50AM
Perhaps you should learn how to take care of yourself before tangling with the Vietnamese again. Loser.
Oh, and: May lam mot ten cong san thoi tha.
Lastly:
Ron Paul 2012 or you are all fucked.
Signed
MR Zipperhead
"particularly when it’s understood that they are not only capitalists but devout Catholics. "
actually, one really cannot be a Capitalist and a Catholic (definately, not a marxist either). Capitalism is another form of control by a few of most of productive property. Capitalists funded Marx and his later followers.
Think outside of the box-think Distributism.....
"Gu Kul, who used to own and operate an automotive parts business in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has been victimized by China’s predatory corporate elite.'
Thank you for making my last point, the "elite" are capitalists, always ready to use the power of the state to protect their intrests and crush competition. What we have is an Orwellian change of meaning that now capitalism=private buisness enterprise......it was not that originally, starting with the Dissolution of Monasteries in England, where the land was taken by a few nobles and royals and their cronies. Then bankers to manipulate and make vast sums w/o any labor toward it. The chump change left after this goes to the laborer.....read John Medaille's books..or something by Thomas Storck....
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