Police Target
Weapons And Toys in Vietnam
August 22, 2000 10:50 am EST
HANOI (Reuters) - Police in Vietnam's capital Hanoi have launched a campaign
to confiscate illegal weapons, explosives, fire-crackers and even toy guns and
knives ahead of key events in the communist calendar.
Tuesday's Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper said the campaign was aimed at
maintaining security ahead of the 55th anniversary of Vietnam's independence
declaration on September 2 and events leading to March's Ninth Congress of the
ruling Communist Party.
Targets will include toys, such as plastic swords, bows and arrows, rifles
and grenade-shaped lighters. These were banned three years ago on the grounds
that they promote violence.
In the past week, newspapers have carried warnings from senior officials,
including Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, that Vietnamese overseas are plotting to
overthrow socialism.
Violence involving guns or explosives is rarely reported in authoritarian
Vietnam, where the press is state-controlled.
However, official media has reported that on August 8, four officials were
slightly injured, two of them police officers, when about 150 members of the Ede
minority attacked ethnic Vietnamese settlers in the central highlands over a
land dispute.
And in a rare urban incident, a tear gas canister was let off at a Hanoi
nightclub recently, the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post said
in an eyewitness report published Sunday.
