Vietnamese authorities have raised a compensation offer to residents evicted from land in Ho Chi Minh City nearly five years ago and announced that three schools would be built on the property, two people who used to live in the community said.
The land dispute dates back to early 2019, when local authorities forcibly pushed out hundreds of residents of the Loc Hung Vegetable Garden settlement, claimed by the Catholic Church, including political dissidents and veterans of the former Army of South Vietnam.
They also demolished more than 100 of their houses along with their crops and gardens, claiming the structures had been built illegally. The evicted residents relocated to other places or moved in with relatives, and the land has since been unused.
Authorities in the city’s Tan Binh district said they upped the first offer of more than 7 million dong (US$290) per square meter to 11.2 million dong (US$460) per square meter. If residents agree to the new amount, they will be paid in December.
Soon after that, construction would begin on the three new schools — Son Ca Kindergarten, Huong Vuong Elementary School and Mac Dinh Chi Middle School – to be built on more than five hectares (12 acres) of land in the community, the city's police agency news website reported on Nov. 10.
Though the state technically owns all land in Vietnam, land confiscations have become a point of contention as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to those whose land is taken.
But those whose homes and plants were demolished said they have sufficient evidence to prove the land was theirs to use for a long time and that authorities intentionally refused to issue land-use right certificates to rob them of their parcels.
Rejecting the offer
In the past two weeks, authorities notified all those affected that they would make public a draft financial assistance plan, which is part of the project to build the public schools that meet national standards on public land in Ward 6. Authorities also sent the former residents a feedback form for their opinions on the proposal.
But many former residents said they would reject the new offer, and objected to the school building project, too.
Cao Ha Truc, whose family had lived in the settlement since 1954, said about 30 officials came to his home on Monday to provide a draft financial assistance plan, though he suspected that the visit by the large group was aimed at scaring his elderly father into compliance.
Truc, who represented a group of about 80 affected residents, said that most of the former settlement members disagreed with the newly proposed compensation rate, adding that the school project was just a tactic to turn private land into public land.
“The authorities have had the intention to steal our land many times,” he told Radio Free Asia on Monday. “Changing from one project to another was just a tactic to turn private land into public land.”
“Today, after four years and 10 months, they started a new trick – building schools,” Truc said. “They said they would handle things drastically from now to December so they could begin the project.”
Little choice
Tran Thi Thoa, whose family moved to Ho Chi Minh City 1954 and was allocated 400 square meters (4,300 square feet) of land in the settlement by the local government, told RFA that authorities recently sent the draft financial assistance plan along with threatening words to affected households.
“They gave us a compensation rate and asked us to accept it, [saying] that if we did not take it, we would lose it, and the money would be sent to a state fund,” she said.
Thoa called the motivations of the authorities of Tan Binh District and Ward 6 suspect, saying that authorities were trying to collect the affected residents’ signatures so they had a basis to propose the school construction project for approval.
“It’s my understanding that they need the signatures to seek the approval of the Government Office or the Chairman of the [Ho Chi Minh City] People’s Committee for their proposed project — not to implement the project,” she said.
Truc suggested that city officials meet directly with the affected residents to reach an agreement on reasonable compensation rates.
RFA could not reach the Ward 6 People’s Committee or the spokesperson of the Tan Binh District People’s Committee.
Authorities plan to invest more than 1.2 billion dong (US$49,200) in the project, more than half of which will be used to provide financial assistance to affected former residents, according to the Ho Chi Minh City police agency report.
The project is expected to be completed and put into use in 2025 on the 50th anniversary of Vietnam’s Reunification Day, commemorated on April 30, the report said.
In January 2019, Ho Chi Minh City’s People’s Committee approved the plan to pay affected residents 7 million dong per square meter of lost farmland — a deal accepted by 45 of the 124 former households, who received payments totaling 64 billion dong, according to the news report.
But Thoa disputed the figure, telling RFA that only about 10 households had agreed to this amount at the time.
Then in December 2022, four months after meeting with the former residents and Tan Binh District officials, the city's People's Committee agreed to increase the compensation amount to 11.2 million dong per square meter.
Truc said that the new amount had no legal basis and was still too low to allow former residents to find new permanent accommodations and livelihoods.
The local government announced that it would retain 10-20% of the money earmarked for the residents to cover eviction expenses in 2019 and fees to look after the land since then, he said.
Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.