CORRESPONDENCE - 85A COMBINED REPORTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN VIETNAM 2012

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VII. "VICTIMS OF LAND INJUSTICE" OR THE STORY OF LAND RIGHTS PETITIONERS According to the 2010 statistics released by the Directorate General of Statistics, nearly 70% of the Vietnamese people were living in the countryside. To the farmers, farm land, in addition to its economic value, also carries an important spiritual meaning, tying them to their history, ancestors and community. Since the communist takeover of the whole country, land becomes "the property of the entire people, uniformly managed by the State." (Art.l of the Land Law of 1993). People can only exchange or purchase land use certificates. The abolition of private land property has thus caused countless injustice and unfairness to all classes of people, especially to the farmers in the countryside. After introducing the "socialist- oriented market economy," and thanks to foreign financial aid or investment, the Vietnamese government has launched several programs in recent years to develop infrastructures such as roads, industrial parks, eco- tourism zones, and other essential public works. One of the primary factors involved in those economic projects is land. According to a recent report by the Embassy of Denmark, the World Bank, and the Embassy of Sweden, "during the period 2001 -2010, nearly one million hectares of agricultural land were converted to land used for non- agricultural purposes, and more than 5 million hectares of unused land (62% of total unused land in the year 2000) were converted into land for various useful purposes. »20 20 Recognizing and Reducing Corruption Risks in Land Management in Vietnam, National Political Publishing House — Su That, Hanoi 2011, p. ix Vietnam Human Rights Network * Annual Report 2011 Besides the clearance of land for economic proj ects, different intertwined and contradictory reasons were advanced to allow for the state's interference in land management. Examples include its refusal to return the cultivated land assigned to the already dissolved production cooperatives, construction land confiscated during the industrial - commercial transformation without proper paperwork, or church properties taken by force or permitted to use conditionally. It's worthy to note that while conducting site clearance activities, government cadres deliberately overestimate the needs of the intended plan to grab as much land as possible, so they could appropriate the surplus, and resell it to developers who are willing to pay the highest price possible (usually 10 times more than the reimbursement rates or even higher) and pocket the difference. The government's 2011 anti - corruption report ranked land - related corruption as number one in quantitative terms and level of severity among the state activities in taxes, customs, and economic policy. This often happened to some of the most fertile land cultivated by generations of farmers, causing great losses to impoverished and powerless farmers who do not know where to turn to address their grievances. Corruption and injustice in land management also makes a significant contribution to the growing gap in the society between the rich and the poor. Rich cadres are getting richer while poor farmers are reduced to dire poverty. In the past several years, the number of state officials and land speculators who collaborated with them became billionaires at a shocking rate. This tragic situation has persisted throughout the years; however in recent days it has become even worse. In his press conference on 9 January 2012 about land complaints, the Deputy Inspector General Nguyen Due Hanh disclosed that 25