Vietnam INTERNAL SECURITY
Gate to Ben Tre Re-education Camp
Courtesy Bill Herod
Internal security was never much of a problem in North
Vietnam; it was probably somewhat more tenuous in unified
Vietnam. Unification, understandably, introduced new internal
threats, which the regime in the 1980s was able to keep in check.
As perceived in Hanoi theoretical journals, the most significant
internal threat was the danger of counterrevolution, a
possibility that had both internal and external implications.
Hanoi feared that a resistance effort in Vietnam would mount an
effective guerrilla war aided by outsiders who sought either to
roll back communism in Indochina or to effect change in Hanoi's
leadership. These outsiders might include not only foreign
governments but also emigre Vietnamese seeking to destroy the
ruling system.
There was widespread latent opposition to the regime,
particularly in the South. In general it was low-level, widely
scattered, and poorly organized and led. Opposition activities
ranged from graffiti and similar token gestures to fairly largesized guerrilla attacks in the Central Highlands. In the early
1980s, an active militant resistance force was estimated by
observers abroad to number about 25,000 combatants. That figure
tended to dwindle later in the decade. Given the extraordinary
amount of social control in Vietnam, as in other Marxist-Leninist
societies, it would be difficult for a resistance force to
achieve sufficient size, strength, and cohesiveness to present a
serious challenge to the existing system. The regime's strategy,
therefore, was to keep the opposition off balance and prevent it
from organizing.
Police, crime-detection, and law-enforcement activities
tended to be treated collectively under the heading of "public
security." These activities were conducted by overlapping, but
tightly compartmentalized, institutions of control, separated by
only hazy lines of jurisdiction. In particular, there was no
sharp division between the internal security duties of PAVN
forces and those of the civilian elements of the Ministry of
Interior. This amorphous organization of law enforcement and
internal security work can be traced to the VCP's early heritage
and its experiences in the First Indochina War when functional
distinctions within the party organization were less pronounced.
Contributing to it is the clandestine character of such activity
and the penchant for secrecy and covert action endemic in
Vietnamese culture. Both party and state have paid enormous
attention to the maintenance of public order. Perhaps it is for
this reason that internal security has always been well managed
and security threats have always been contained. The methods
employed are sophisticated, often subtle, and there is less use
of naked repression than many outsiders believe.
Four clusters of agencies were responsible for crime
prevention and the maintenance of public order and internal
security under the 1985 Criminal Code. The enforcement bodies
were the People's Security Force (PSF) or People's Police,
operating chiefly in urban areas; the People's Public Security
Force (PPSF), called the People's Security Service or PSS at the
village level; the plain-clothes or secret police; and the
People's Armed Security Force (PASF), a quasi-military organ,
including some PAVN personnel, operating chiefly in the villages
and rural areas and concerned both with crime and antistate
activities. These agencies of control had the broad
responsibility of mobilizing the general population to support
internal security programs, in addition to performing internal
auditing, inspection, and general monitoring of both party and
state activity. The judiciary promoted security and law
enforcement. The courts, i.e., the investigative elements of the
judicial system, were charged with uncovering evidence in
addition to prosecuting the accused.
These institutions were charged under the Criminal Code with
protecting the public from crime, broadly defined as "any act
dangerous to society." Supporting them, although independent of
them, was the party apparatus, which reached to the most remote
hamlets of the country.
In the mid-1980s, both urban and rural geographic areas were
divided into wards, sub-wards, and blocks and were administered
by security cadres, who were aided and supported by the mass
organizations. Each of the basic units (generally the ward or
block) had a security committee. In addition, in key or sensitive
areas, there was a special party unit (called Red Flag Security)
also organized at the ward or block level. The philosophy of this
internal security system was that self-implemented,
self-motivated, social discipline was required for true internal
security and that this was both the duty and the right of the
individual citizen. An important characteristic of the public
security sector was that, although it extended equally across the
civilian (the Ministry of Interior) and the military (PAVN,
especially its paramilitary forces) sectors, the dominant
influence was civilian and, ultimately, the party.
Data as of December 1987
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