Can the Vietnamese ever speak for democracy? A look on Myanmar's protest.

Speaking on the ongoing Myanmar protests, which claimed the lives of more than 500 citizens, the protest has led me to think and question the desire of the protesters, and its willingness to commit for a long term run. At the same time, my soul spun to see on Vietnam, a country that is considered as the most brutal dictatorship in Southeast Asia, even above Myanmar; yet the Vietnamese people in majority, instead of taking its stance in solidarity for democracy; have chosen a cold-blooded extrusion of democratic activists, even banishing them away.

Then, I look at Vietnamese abroad. Majority of them are refugees who fled from Vietnam, and surely they are more vocal for democracy, and absolutely, they did demonstrate by calling for solidarity, supporting the Burmese protesters. Yet, their call has been mocked as a foxed move, and this was owned by an action on January 2021 that stayed as a stain forever on the status of Vietnamese former refugees.

To think, can Vietnamese ever speak for genuine democracy, the answer is likely, "it's complicated". The complex nature of Vietnamese people has a long unseated root. A root that strongly deemed by its nationalist sentiment, and its difficulties in maintaining relations with different ideologies. Yet even when they have the same ideological sentiment with someone, it's also not easy either. Vietnam copied a number of policies, but nevertheless, she maintained a highly independent attitude, dislike being seen as someone's puppet. This is also the same situation for the democratic movement that Vietnamese abroad and several Vietnamese insiders advocating for. But which democracy? And how? This makes me take into the deep of history.

A failed experiment with democracy

Vietnamese people began to wonder about a democratic government. Among them, one government that would be Vietnam's first hope on becoming a democracy - and this was the State of Vietnam, which the modern flag of South Vietnam derived for.

Bao Dai, the last King of Vietnam.

Speaking about Bao Dai, most historians agreed that he was weak-willed and an unfortunate King. Installed and educated by the French, he was largely under the shadow of Paris. Despite proclaiming an independent state in 1948, the State of Vietnam, with the yellow flag and three red-stripes to represent, Bao Dai himself actually had no absolute power at all. Pinched by the French, Bao Dai lived a lavish, but isolated life, and he struggled to get national support. Most of Vietnamese population, no matter under the Viet Minh or under his control, regarded the King no more than a traitor.

Before the foundation of the State of Vietnam, Bao Dai had agreed to give the seal for Tran Huy Lieu, a minor minister in the royal government in 1945, who later became a follower of Ho Chi Minh. This meant fate had chosen the Viet Minh to lead the national liberation movement, even though it had become communist. Ho Chi Minh, later the dictator of North Vietnam, was able to utilise this advantage. The French, lacked any major understanding of Vietnamese culture and its desperation for independence, miscalculated the support for Ho Chi Minh. Moreover, even though Bao Dai ruled a nation that would go on to become the Republic of Vietnam, he was politically neutral, out of fear that his support for France would alienate the rest of the population.

The weak King was later deposed by a very powerful Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem disliked openly Bao Dai, seeing him an incompetent King, and sought to replace the State into a Republic. Diem himself was also a nationalist, but the difference was, unlike Bao Dai, Diem was a Catholic nationalist. Being a radical Catholic, Ngo Dinh Diem had no love for the Buddhist majority, and himself also indebted to the French deeply, because his family, thanked for the French missionary in the 17th century, became Catholics.

That led Ngo Dinh Diem to practice radical pro-Christian policies despite his pledge for a free Vietnam. On his mind, the Buddhists were not to be trusted, because they rebelled against the French. Even though the North Vietnamese regime was openly practising a series of terror against religious followers, Ngo Dinh Diem ensured that no one would be equal either. He made a number of approaches that could be seen as clear evidence of religious and racial segregation. He implemented terror on Buddhist population, as well as placing South Vietnam under the protection of Virgin Mary, ignoring the fact that Vietnam is a Buddhist society for a thousand year. He also empowered the majority ethnic Kinh Vietnamese at the expense of other minorities like the Montagnards, Khmers, Chams and perhaps Hmongs. Although he was unwilling to allow the United States to intervene in Vietnam, his reign has been compared to the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Thus, the beginning of the downfall. Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated by a CIA-backed coup in 1963, and subsequently, the Republic became unstable. A string of military strongmen came to power, before being removed in subsequent coups. The ethnic rebellions became more frequent, and American efforts to mediate for a united front against communist North Vietnam was fruitless, as none of them had any common outside against communism. The Montagnards, being Christianised by the Americans and were majority Protestants, had a long resentment against Catholics and communists. The Chams were majority Muslims but with a significant Hindu minority, had been persecuted by historical Vietnamese dynasties. And there we had the Hmongs who had no interest in supporting the government of either north or south. The American involvement only lowered the leverage America had when the United States mercilessly used violence against civilians during the Vietnam War. The communists in the north, though no better due to its ruthlessness, as the communists' brutal land reforms and genocide against pro-south sympathisers were rampant, but the estrangement of the population in the south hinted the eventual dropout. It did, and in 1975, a very tired and disunited South succumbed to the North and culminated in the worst human exodus in Southeast Asia.

Limited knowledge of democracy...

Yet, even when many Vietnamese fled from communist terror to settle abroad, their knowledge of democracy is severely limited. This was due to their interest in wealth rather than a real understanding of functioning democracy. As I had written, many Vietnamese radicalised themselves, mainly into the group that would support them the most, and no matter which groups of refugees, their eyes always look at the United States, the country that fought in this Vietnam War. It was the Republican Party.

So often, that the Vietnamese diaspora in majority became fervant Republicans. Even the initiative to stop communist expansionism had been done by Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, the Vietnamese diaspora blamed the Democrats mainly due to the loss of South Vietnam. The Vietnamese refugees and perhaps many of its descendants saw, still the Democrats, as communists and fifth column that would try to make America a communist state. Every four year, in the United States Presidential Election, elder Vietnamese harassed and reminded young Vietnamese that "voting for Democrats means suicide of freedom". The Vietnamese society is based on hierarchy, so it is no secret that the younger Vietnamese have been stipulated to the conservative voices, and news that Barack Obama was an "illegal immigrant" and a "black monkey", Joe Biden "a servant of Beijing and Moscow", Mitt Romney "unpatriotic" and even slur against John McCain "unfaithful liar", etc, are frequently appeared. Racism is also used in Vietnamese media abroad, with strong anti-African and even anti-Asian notes. It has been the same practice by the Vietnamese Americans, so much that it turns into a norm, a very toxic norm. There have been attempts to combat such things, but fact-checked media among Vietnamese is scarce against a powerful juggernaut conservatism. Not just only in America, it is the same media that operates in countries where Vietnamese diaspora traced its origin post-1975.

I had some stake of experience when reading a drafted constitution written by the free Vietnamese organisations abroad wanting to replace the communist constitution. But it has a lot of absurdities. The constitution demands the removal of Hanoi as the capital, because it "associated with the north", ignoring that the city was also the capital under French rule and the historic capital of Vietnamese Empire. It also requires the glorification of Vietnamese race, but not the other ethnicities, something unacceptable given how diverse Vietnam is. Some version even put references to Confederacy and Hitlerism, such as the breed of superiority, power, subordination and disrespect of other sovereign nations, for the dream of Vietnam's revival that spanned from the beneath of Yangtze to the Shan State in Myanmar. This may explain why the conservative voices among Vietnamese diaspora are virulent. Adding with how Vietnamese diaspora in the West campaign for democracy without a framework or proper education like the previous Eastern European refugees to create a democratic institution, only ensures it'll be doomed when it begins.

This low understanding of democracy is further exacerbated when over 50% of Vietnamese population in the U.S., by an AAPI survey, supported Trump, the highest among Asian Americans. It brought us to the infamous Capitol Hill riots on 6 January, where many Vietnamese Americans carried the yellow flags, attacked the sacred Capitol. Among them included a lot of policemen and singers of Vietnamese descent. The failed insurrection had been condemned worldwide, but Vietnamese diaspora chose to endorse it and refused to take actions a week until the FBI released footages, and identified rioters, that they began trying to correct it, but the damage was done. The South Vietnamese flag had been listed as one of the domestic terrorist flags, "proudly" among the flags of KKK, Nazis and Confederates. Given the malignant ideology of Vietnamese Americans and the majority of Vietnamese diaspora, nobody trusts any kind of Vietnamese democratic call anymore. Asian diasporas loathed them as ungrateful, rioters, and domestic terrorists. Now, Vietnamese racist ideology is ironically exposed when even Vietnamese themselves could not protect from the wave of anti-Asian hate crimes in the West.

...to be ignorant in democracy

When Vietnamese overseas in the West struggled and finally lost most of its legitimacy due to its fatal action in the Capitol Hill, the Vietnamese of Vietnam and in the diaspora communities that once parts of the communist world or in East Asia and the Middle East, these people also had no idea about democracy either. This is due to the different culture they live in.

Unlike Vietnamese living in Western Europe, North America and Australasia, these Vietnamese in Eastern Europe, East, Southeast and West Asia aren't interested in democracy. Actually, this is not so hard to see, since these nations, like Vietnam, suffered longer totalitarianism, and even now some countries aren't democratic, like China, Russia and Thailand. Even when it goes to democratic nations like South Korea, Ukraine, Japan, India, Poland, Taiwan, Bulgaria, Czechia and Israel, these nations also demonstrate little to support the Vietnamese for democratic education.

Vietnamese people in Japan used to be formed by mainly anti-communists but now outpaced by the new immigrants that are typically neutral or pro-government.

No better evidence examined this like Japan and South Korea. Back in 1980s, the bulk of Vietnamese people living there were mainly from the south, and they deeply held grievances against communist terror in their vanished homeland, and the two countries had promised the United States that it vowed to defend them. Yet, when Vietnam embraced economic reform in 1990s, the newer Vietnamese diaspora came to Japan and South Korea slowly dissipated the previous refugees, as Tokyo and Seoul no longer honoured upholding of Vietnamese call for freedom. These new migrants have no interests in supporting or promoting democracy in Vietnam as expected, they instead care only about money to supply families at home. This has been criticised, though not large, by the other Vietnamese groups in the West who felt Japan and South Korea had lost their morale.

This is the same in Taiwan, India and Israel, where both, despite being democracies, made no attempt to condemn the communist government in Vietnam. In fact, they saw the Vietnamese regime as some kind of ally, largely because it fought China from 1979-1990, and the fact that the communist regime of Vietnam did, in some point, resist influence from Russia and China just because its leader Ho Chi Minh desired to become an American ally. Perhaps it also sways America's re-engagement with Vietnam.

In these Vietnamese people's mindset, democracy is something oxymoron, they don't see it really worthy and they frequently cited how Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, DR Congo, Libya, Egypt and Thailand as examples of failed democracy. Some Vietnamese from Eastern Europe and other Asian countries recounted how they are not respected by their peers in Western Europe made them less interested in backing for democracy. The Vietnamese there are mostly pragmatic, but they have little insight into the totalitarian government they live in. A part that is because the government champions economic liberty, but not political liberty; the communist regime in Vietnam is very strict and usually secretive, so information from them can't usually be read. Another hand, Vietnamese culture, strongly influenced by China, has been deeply monolithic, and the Vietnamese only concerned about money, still now. "The lesser talking politics, the freer you are" - this is a typical Vietnamese precept nowadays in Vietnam. The Vietnam War can also be counted as another factor. Hence these people shun any democratic activists, if not saying, discriminate them openly. They just support the government, even when not all of them agree with how the communist regime manages the country.

That said, the communist government also proves to be a tough survivor. Having escaped the Vietnam War and subsequent Chinese threat in 1980s, the collapse of Soviet Union, it has moderated policies to ensure its state survival while maintaining a powerful grip. Economic prosperity is prized in its official agenda, and successful COVID responses polished the state's image. It also relaxes, not entirely, censorship when it proves to be able to rally for state support, such as anti-Chinese articles in response to South China Sea conflict and recently no longer censorship imposed in 1979 war. Buying ethnic loyalty also demonstrates the scale it could show, the communist leadership is even eager to appoint several ethnic Tai, Hmong, Burman, Chinese, Khmer, Montagnard, Cham and Nung to the highest Politburo leadership. Even some of the leading Vietnamese celebrities also come from the minorities, like H'Hen Nie, a Vietnamese model of Montagnard (Rade) origin; remember Vietnam has 20% population are non-Vietnamese. This is to quell down any criticism of state discrimination, blackout or human rights violation.

Why Myanmar?

Speaking about Myanmar's protest, I decided to make a mention because it is useful.

The protest in Myanmar has some abnormality in nature. If protests back in 1988 and 2007 of Myanmar had been largely sectarian, when the majority of participants were ethnic Bamars and demanded more rights for citizens but neglecting the ethnic minorities; the protest of 2021 has witnessed a total change in nature. For the first time, the Burmese protesters start talking about making the country a federal democracy, something that should've been done in the Panglong Agreement back in 1947.

Yet this is also a problem. Though Aung San (the father of detained Aung San Suu Kyi) did, generously, by signing the Panglong Agreement, an agreement made in respect to give the ethnic minorities the rights to govern and secede if they're not happy with the government, he was unable to live to the country's independence, being gunned down by a group of rogue soldiers opposing the agreement. Subsequent early civilian government from 1948, to the junta from 1962-2011, and later quasi-civilian government from 2011-2021, none of them bothered about calls for federal democracy.

This was due to several factors. Early civilian government sought to centralise the state and to keep the economic achievement they enjoyed under Britain. The junta, continuing the civilian's tradition, persecuted dissenting opinions, further centralising the state by propaganda machines that warned against the disintegration of the union. This brainwashing machine was not just highly effective to the army that took power in 1962, even when they ceded half of their power to civilian control in 2011, still contributing to Bamar racism and its reluctance to accept genuine democracy.

It only changed in 2021 when other ethnic minorities received a call to form a new federal army, and a rise of apologies for the mishandling of the past. Yet ethnic minorities received these proposals with scepticism, despite agreeing to protect the protesters.

Again, we talk about the facets. Myanmar, or Burma, had been historically governed by Bamar-led empires. Three empires that reckoned Southeast Asia, were both led by ethnic Bamars. On the mind, the Bamar rulers did not see other ethnicities as equal. This came for generation, so deep that when the British army conquered Burma in 1886, the racial tensions only further inflamed. Britain Christianised the Karens, Kachins and Chins; giving autonomy to the Shans; Islamised the Rohingyas and other Indian/Chinese Panthays. The British regime repressed violently the majority Bamars. During World War II, Aung San, later revered hero of Burma, assembled an army in Japan known as the Burma Independence Army, which later became the Burmese Armed Forces (Tatmadaw). The army was founded exclusively by Bamars, thus the antipathy against minorities carried on once the Japanese seized Burma from Britain. Aung San later regretted the action, but it was too late. Ethnic nationalism has ingrained deep in the Tatmadaw.

Moreover, the Tatmadaw is also very cagey. Since it took power in 1962 coup, the Tatmadaw had converted, successfully, the civilian system into a government where the military held absolute power. Even after 1988, thing unchanged and the military maintained its iron grip, writing a new constitution in 2008 ensuring military domination unchallenged. At the same time, it has conducted massacres on minorities, so much that every minority hates them, for 70 years. Bamar supremacy reigned above.

Yet we need to blame the previous protests in 1988 and 2007. These protests had largely been driven by rising economic incompetence and military mismanagement. But none of these protests ever called for genuine democracy nor even rights for minorities. Aung San Suu Kyi, on her charm offensive back in 1990, tried to gain backup from the ethnic people outside the Bamars, but she literally had no idea about the persecution of ethnic people in her home country.

So now, when these protesters began calling for a unity government and a united federal armed forces to fight the brutal Tatmadaw, this brings back a question: how credible is it? This is totally understandable, given the series of failed negotiations and fragile ceasefires frequently broken between the government and ethnic armed rebels.

The meeting of Myanmar's 21st Century Panglong Peace Conference in Naypyidaw, 11 July 2018.

It's hard to believe the authenticity of the offer by the protesters. So far, these armed rebels replied generously, by sheltering the protesters and attacking Tatmadaw's outposts. But the long term remains to be seen.

The lesson of Syria also lives, too. Back in 2011, Syrians of all ages, races and religious groups poured into the streets calling for the downfall of the Assad dictatorship, following the tortures of a group of children due to anti-Assad graffiti. But when the civil war broke out, these groups tore apart because of ideological differences: the Kurds want independence from both the government and rebels; the Armenians and Assyrians are more willing to side with the government; the Turkmen, Chechens and Arab Sunnis want to expel the Shi'a Alawites; the Palestinians fighting as mercenaries in both sides; terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and ISIL take its reign. This rebellion has continued without an end. Foreign involvements become a norm, Turkey, the United States, Saudi Arabia, France, Qatar and Britain support the rebels; Iran, Russia, Lebanon and Iraq ally with Assad government - though both persuaded its geopolitical interests. Myanmar is sliding into that way, too.

This has shown how complicated the path to democracy like. For a nation that has so many different ethnic people, armed rebels that only pay lip service because "it is needed", not for a really necessary long-term vision, adding with a population that, while agreeing to fight the Tatmadaw, appear to be difficult to understand. Myanmar is destined to be unstable, perhaps, for quite a long time.

Can Vietnamese ever speak for a potential democracy?

For now, Vietnamese people are still clueless about democracy, no matter where they reside. Vietnamese in the West campaign without a framework nor a deep understanding of democracy, leading to the failed Trump coup and being compared as terrorists, racists or insurrectionists. Vietnamese in the East have no interest in speaking for democracy if not saying they are not going to make any political demands.

This left me with a question: what would happen in the future for Vietnam, for both the democratic and the disinterested people? And if there is democracy, where will Vietnam head for? Or do Vietnamese in the majority feel the government is acceptable?

I think what's going on in Myanmar, or what happened in Syria, is a serious reminder for us that, Vietnamese people are not ready for democracy. That doesn't mean the communist government is fairish, but if we can't understand where we're, then how can we even think of democracy for the nation? It's even more amusing to rethink that Myanmar's roadmap to democracy is designed by the military, not the people, thus this will only further expose weaknesses.

Let's remember, South Korea used to be under military rule, but at least, the South Korean leadership understood and accepted democracy while the people really found their belief at the same time. The same thing in Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines, where military juntas agreed to cede power. This is something completely absent in Vietnam, where a communist totalitarian regime, embracing economic reform, has no take in supporting democratisation; while at the same time, many Vietnamese disagree on how to function it.

Perhaps, it is better to envision a Singaporean-style government, a benevolent authoritarian regime where, while not really democratic, does accept freedom of speech and the rights of people, that may work in Vietnam. Only a slow, but resilient process, may allow Vietnam to become the country that people want it to be.