Defence and security education plays a central role in raising cadres, party members and citizens’ awareness and responsibility for the Homeland construction and protection. Hence, over the years, the province of Yen Bai has focused its leadership and direction on performing this important work via various creative measures and achieved a lot of positive results.

Yen Bai is a mountainous province located in the Northeast, with a total natural area of nearly 6.900 km² and a population of over 820,000. With the support from our Party and State as well as the unity and effort of the provincial Party Organisation, authorities, and people, in recent years, the province’s economy has achieved rapid growth rate (the average gross regional domestic product has been 6.64%). The economic structure has been positively shifted towards an increase in industry and services. The average per capita income has been over 40 million VND per annum. However, Yen Bai is still a poor province. The people are facing a lot of difficulties in their life. There are many threats to political security and social order and safety. Against that backdrop, the province of Yen Bai has focused its leadership and direction on enhancing defence and security education for all groups of learners and people to achieve a consensus about the two strategic missions of national construction and protection in the new situation.

Grasping and executing the Defence and Security Education Law and higher echelons’ directives and guiding documents on defence and security education, the Provincial Military Command (PMC) as the Standing Agency of the Provincial Defence and Security Education Council has frequently practically reviewed groups of learners to give advice to the Provincial Party Committee and People’s Committee on developing education plans and issuing directives and legal normative documents on this work. At the same time, it has proposed measures to consolidate all-level Defence and Security Education Councils both qualitatively and quantitatively after the all-level party congresses and the election of deputies to all-level people’s councils under the Law.

Due to the province’s large area and difficulties in traffic, particularly within the two mountainous districts of Tram Tau and Mu Cang Chai, the PMC has cooperated with the province’s committees, departments, sectors, and localities in seriously realising plans for defence and security education in order that all groups of learners would be provided with defence and security education under resolutions of the all-level party congresses. Great value has been attached to renewing the forms, contents, programmes, and methods of defence and security education in accordance with each group of learners and each area’s particularities. While dispatching cadres of the 1^st and 2^nd groups to attend defence and security education courses held by higher echelons, the province has proactively organised such courses for cadres of the 3^rd and 4^th groups within localities at each level. It should be noted that immediately after the 13^th National Party Congress, the PMC has selected and trained a contingent of rapporteurs to disseminate new points of the Resolution of the Congress, actively established the system of specialised topics relevant to each group of learners, removed the old, overlapping contents, and supplemented new specialised topics relating to the Homeland construction and protection, the defence struggle, and the defence of political security and social order and safety within the province. In the process, the province has directed its committees, sectors and localities to flexibly include defence and security education for cadres, party members, and heads of offices in meetings, refresher courses, defensive zone exercises, and natural disaster prevention and control, search and rescue drills.

Providing defence and security education for religious dignitaries

In addition, the province has placed emphasis on providing defence and security education for business managers, village patriarchs and persons with great prestige within ethnic groups. It is worth noting that under the Project 01-ĐA/TƯ, dated August 25^th, 2016 by the Provincial Party Committee Standing Board on “raising the effectiveness and quality of the religious work within the province of Yen Bai towards 2020, with orientations towards 2025,” the PMC has advised the Provincial People’s Committee on directing the all-level Defence and Security Education Councils to collaborate with the Provincial Propaganda and Education Commission and boards of religions in organising defence and security education classes for religious dignitaries. At the same time, the PMC has enhanced investigation and inspection of offices and units’ defence and security education work to opportunely rectify weaknesses. With such active and synchronous measures, between 2010 and 2020, 54,997 cadres accomplished defence and security education courses at all levels (98.3% of the plan), while 1,551 religious dignitaries and 749 village patriarchs and persons with great prestige within ethnic minority groups were provided with knowledge of defence and security. Thanks to defence and security education courses, party committees and authorities’ capabilities in leadership, direction and management as well as offices’ capacity to give advice on the defence and security work have been improved. Typical examples have been the city of Yen Bai, the town of Nghia Lo, and the districts of Van Chan, Van Yen, and Yen Binh.

Students are the future owners of the country. However, they are easily incited to engage in activities that threaten defence and security. Being fully aware of that fact, the province has always concentrated on improving the quality of defence and security education for students. While the number of students within the province is large, there is a lack of teachers of defence and security education and most of them are inexperienced. Thus, the Provincial Defence and Security Education Council has directed the Provincial Department of Education and Training and other relevant offices to develop plans and strictly execute regulations on defence and security education for students. At the same time, they have been required to retrain and standardise teachers of defence and security education and acquire equipment for this subject. In order to raise the quality of the subject, while sending teachers to attend courses at universities and refresher courses held by higher echelons, the PMC has advised the province on organising training courses to improve teachers’ knowledge of defence and security. Military offices have cooperated with schools in holding defence contests, while extracurricular activities for students, such as visit to museums and historical sites, exchange programme with military units, and war veterans’ talk about the tradition of the hometown, the country, and the Vietnam People’s Army have been organised. Defence and security education has helped broaden students’ mind and raise their qualities, patriotism, and responsibility for the Homeland construction and protection. Thanks to this work, on a yearly basis, the province always reaches the targets of military call-up, while the number of cadets in military schools from the province is unceasingly increased.

Within the provinces, there are about 30 ethnic groups of people. Ethnic minority people account for 57.4% of the province’s population. 90% of the population of the two mountainous districts of Tram Tau and Mu Cang Chai are ethnic minority people, mainly the Hmong people. In recent years, there has been an increase in illegal religious activities negatively impacting on the province’s political security and social order and safety. Therefore, the province of Yen Bai has enhanced the dissemination of knowledge of defence and security for all citizens. Under its function and assigned task, the PMC has cooperated with the province’s Propaganda and Education Commission and Department of Information and Communications in directing news agencies at provincial and district levels to set up special columns and pages about the all-people national defence and the people’s security to equip all people with the knowledge of defence and security. Focuses of propagation have been placed on national independence, sovereignty, unification and territorial integrity, civil defence, citizens’ responsibility for the Homeland construction and protection, the hostile forces’ nature, plots and artifices, local armed forces’ activities, and the hometown’s revolutionary tradition. Besides, the province has well conducted the work of propagation to persuade locals not to follow religions that have yet to be recognised by the State, while effectively managing the people’s ideological and religious issues.

Furthermore, importance has been attached to promoting the role of rapporteurs, organisations, and unions in disseminating the knowledge of defence and security and including defence and security education in propagation activities on the occasion of the country’s major political events and traditional festivals. Doing so has helped raise citizens’ awareness and responsibility for implementing the Party’s guidelines and the State’s law and policy on defence and security. A part from propagation and education, the province has directed all-level party committees and authorities, unions, and the armed forces to grasp and opportunely handle the people’s issues right at grass-roots level. Those organisations have also been required to help locals foster production, stabilise the people’s life and cement their faith in local party committees and authorities, thereby contributing to consolidating the “posture of people’s hearts and minds,” making the all-people national defence increasingly strong, and maintaining political security and social order and safety within the province.

Thanks to those above-mentioned measures, the work of defence and security education performed by the province of Yen Bai has obtained positive results and been highly appreciated by the Military Region 2’s Defence and Security Education Council. That would provide a solid foundation for raising all citizens’ awareness and responsibility for the military-defence task and the protection of political security and social order and safety, contributing to realising the goal of turning Yen Bai into a wealthy province by 2025 and a top developed locality of the Northern Midland and Mountainous Region by 2030 set by the Resolution of the 19^th Provincial Party Congress.

Sr. Col. TRAN CONG UNG, Member of the Provincial Party Committee Standing Board

Commander of the PMC, Permanent Deputy Head of the Provincial Defence and Security Education Council