In recent years, to execute their “peaceful evolution” strategy against Vietnam’s revolution, the hostile forces have called for the people to join “civil disobedience” in a bid to gather the force for a “colour revolution” or a “street revolution” against our authority. Therefore, we need to maintain vigilance against these calls for “civil disobedience” in any form.

According to the Wikipedia, “Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government. By some definitions, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance.” The earliest civil disobedience movement was conducted by Egyptians against the British occupation in 1919. Civil disobedience has been used in many nonviolent resistance movements in India (Mahatma Gandhi's campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, in East Germany, in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the Singing Revolution in the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2010s.

Recently, clearly understanding the effectiveness of the type of nonviolent struggle, the hostile forces have devoted efforts to “civil disobedience” and considered it as a path to the overthrow of the political regime led by the Communist Party of Vietnam. There have appeared calls for “civil disobedience” in Vietnam on the hostile forces’ social networks, such as “civil disobedience - a way of escape for Vietnam” or “civil disobedience - the path to freedom for Vietnam.” They have exerted themselves to disseminate the civil disobedience movements worldwide, such as the umbrella movement in Hong Kong (China) and introduce the experiences, principles, and methods of joining a civil disobedience movement, inventing slogans, using uniform and tools to the participants as the “manual for civil disobedience.” Reactionary organizations abroad, such as Viet Tan have held many training courses on civil disobedience for their members so that they could come back to Vietnam and conduct the reactionary movements. They have taken advantage of the country’s issues, such as site clearance, environment pollution, drawbacks of several specific guidelines and policies, and weaknesses of local authorities in social management. They have also made use of the people’s misconception about the distorted information in order to incite the people to oppose or not to implement the Party and State’s guidelines and policies. By doing so, they have promoted disagreements between the people and the authority and legitimized their plot to gather the force against our authority. When the contradiction has reached its peak, they would call for combining nonviolent struggle with violent struggle against the authority as evidenced by the “riot-like” incident in Binh Thuan in June 2018.

To prevent and foil the hostile forces’ conspiracy to call for civil disobedience, it is necessary to grasp and adopt various measures synchronously, with a focus on the following.

We should proactively unmask the nature of the trick of “civil disobedience,” rendering the people fully aware that calls for civil disobedience represent a malicious artifice in the hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy aimed at destroying the country’s peaceful and stable environment. At the same time, we should step up the work of propagation and education to make the people clearly understand that the trick of civil disobedience is aimed at obstructing the authority’s implementation of laws and policies. In other words, it is the deliberate violation of law which expresses the extremist and “anarchic” ideology of individuals, organizations, and particular groups of people. In our country, when being exploited by the hostile forces, civil disobedience will become an instrument for toppling the authority or changing the political regime. Hence, all people must stay vigilant against the calls for civil disobedience in any form.

Due attention should be paid to raising the effectiveness of educating the people’s law-respecting sense. It is important to translate the motto of “living and working under the Constitution and law” into life and make the people follow it, anywhere, anytime. To that end, due regard should be paid to mobilizing the strength of the whole political system to propagate, disseminate, and educate law in accordance with each group of people and areas. Significance should be attached to improving the effectiveness of this work in schools and colleges. Press agencies should promote their role in legal propagation, dissemination and education, with a focus on disseminating the Government’s Decree 38/2005/NĐ-CP, dated March 18^th 2005, on “several measures for maintaining the public order.” Emphasis should be placed on propagating the prohibited acts, namely (1) Taking advantage of citizens’ rights to freedom and democracy to incite, bribe, or force other people to join public gatherings for disrupting the public order or violating the law; (2) Organizing large-scale gatherings contrary to the law on roads and pavements, in front of offices and organizations, in the places where international conferences or meetings of National Assembly and People’s Councils or other major political movements of the Party, State, Vietnam Fatherland Front and politico-social organizations are held, and in other public places. The form and method of legal propagation, dissemination and education should be made diverse, easy to understand and follow, and appropriate to the knowledge level of each group of people so that they could quickly grasp each law and legal document. Local governments should attach importance to giving instructions to the people on the method, process, and procedure of complaints, denunciations, and social criticism under the law. They should resolutely, persistently encourage and persuade the people to observe the law, while clearly explaining the benefits of observing the law and the consequences of disobeying the legal regulations to the people.

Consideration should be given to maintaining the order for receiving the people so that local party committees and authorities could opportunely deal with the people’s urgent issues and prevent the hostile forces from inciting the civil disobedience movement. Local party committees and authorities should strictly implement the Politburo’s Regulation 11-QĐi/TW, dated February 18^th 2019, on “party committee heads’ responsibility for receiving and directly meeting the people and dealing with the people’s opinions and complaints.” Party committee heads (in provinces, districts, and communes) must directly direct the work of receiving the people and handling the people’s opinions, complaints, and denunciations as well as directly receive the people on a regular and unscheduled basis, opportunely meet the people when necessary, and settle the people’s opinions, complaints, and denunciations under their authority. Moreover, heads of local governments should attach great value to encouraging the people’s right to mastery and stringently execute the Regulation on Grass-Roots Level Democracy and local regulations on receiving the people so as to opportunely deal with the people’s legitimate issues. When receiving the people and settling the people’s opinions, proposals, complaints, and denunciations, local party committees and governments should respect the people and handle their issues in a just, objective, timely manner. Besides, a favourable condition should be created to encourage the people express their opinions.

A focus should be placed on building a socialist rule of law State of the people, by the people, and for the people, enhancing the capability in researching and issuing the Party and State’s guidelines and policies, and stepping up the fight against corruption, “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within. Doing so will help eradicate the risks which could be exploited by the hostile forces to call for the people to advocate “civil disobedience.” Currently, it is necessary to effectively implement the measures for building a Government of “discipline, integrity, action, creativity, and effectiveness” and the administration of serving, respecting, and staying close to the people. Besides, it is essential to further improve the capability in researching, proposing, and promulgating highly feasible legal normative documents in accordance with reality. In the process, it is imperative to grasp the viewpoint that “all guidelines, policies, and laws by the Party and the State must derive from the people’s legitimate aspirations, rights, and benefits” and completely eliminate the issuance of guidelines, policies, and legal normative documents improper to reality which could be exploited by the hostile forces. Great value should be building a contingent of cadres and civil servants, and employees in a compact and effective fashion and raising their professional morality, social responsibility, and discipline. It is necessary to continue stepping up the fight against corruption, seriously dealing with corruption cases without “restricted areas”, and consolidating the people’s faith in social equality and law’s strictness. In addition, due attention should be paid to strengthening the work of Party building and rectification under the Resolution of the 12^th Party Central Committee’s 4^th Plenum, actively preventing and repelling the degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle as well as the signs of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within, and effectively implementing the 12^th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW on studying and emulating Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, morality, and lifestyle.

Due regard should be paid to maintaining close cooperation between local forces, sectors, and organizations in grasping the situation at grass-roots level, detecting and thwarting the hostile forces’ artifices and plots to incite the people to join the civil disobedience movement. Localities should develop their own projects and plans for civil disobedience prevention and control integrated into their defensive zone exercises in order to assess their level of readiness. When identifying the signs of civil disobedience, local forces should analyze those signs to find the causes, evaluate the situation correctly, and avoid confusing the disagreement within the people with the contradiction between the enemy and us. At the same time, they should isolate the ringleaders and persistently persuade those who are incited by the hostile forces not to violate the law. Moreover, measures should be taken synchronously to flexibly handle the situation and strictly deal with the ringleaders. It is important to abide by the Government’s regulations on deploying the forces to settle “flashpoints”.

In addition to boosting economic development, implementing social welfare policies, promoting socialist democracy, and ensuring the people’s right to mastery, party committees and authorities at all levels should well execute the above-mentioned measures so as to foil the hostile forces’ plot to incite “civil disobedience” against Vietnam.

Nguyen Ngoc Hoi