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Vietnam Social Control
Under the Hanoi government, "control" was a legal term used
both as a verb and a noun. "Control" meant use of state power to
deal with individuals who committed either civil or political
crimes judged not serious enough to warrant imprisonment, but
serious enough to deserve reform without detention. "Control"
referred also to the status of an individual under such sentence
(also one released from prison but considered not fully
reformed). Hence it combined the condition of being on parole
with that of being in the custody of the court or under state
surveillance. A person under "control" had to report periodically
to local authorities to account for his activities and detail his
efforts to reform. He was proscribed from certain occupations,
including teaching, publishing, practicing medicine or pharmacy,
and operating a restaurant, hotel, or bookstore. Such
restrictions were deemed legal because one under "control" was
considered to have already forfeited some of his civil rights, at
least temporarily.
The mechanism of "control," called the People's Organ of
Control, was hierarchically organized and formally defined by the
1980 Constitution (Articles 127, 138, and 141). At the top was
the Supreme People's Organ of Control, and at the bottom were the
district and precinct organs of control. These institutions
functioned to "control the observance of the law by the
ministries, armed forces, state employees and citizens; to
exercise the right of public prosecution; and to insure strict
and uniform observance of the law." Their purview was "any act
encroaching upon the interests of the State, the collective, or
the lives, property, freedom, honor, and dignity of citizens."
The underlying justification for their existence was that major
internal security problems developed because of a breakdown in
social discipline and that restoration of discipline was best
achieved with a system of self-control or self-discipline. The
system was composed of many activities: physical control;
re-education and reform; indoctrination, emulation, and
motivation; and education. Its essence was organization and
motivation, and in the hands of skilled cadres it could harness
social pressure to induce new attitudes and ways of thinking.
Data as of December 1987
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