HANOI, Vietnam – For most of his life, Nguyen Lap has heard loud announcements from loudspeakers mounted on power poles around Hanoi, entangled in electrical wiring and shaded by subtropical foliage.
Lap, 75, said last month in the Vietnamese capital: “In the past, loudspeakers worked well because people lacked information. “They’ve been noisy all day, but that doesn’t bother me.”
That doesn’t mean he wants them back.
During the Vietnam War, loudspeakers alerted Mr. Lap and others in Hanoi to the approaching American B-52s while bombing. For decades afterward, they churned out Communist Party propaganda and updates about pension payments, power outages, and other city minutiae.
The Hanoi city government suspended regular broadcasts in 2017 but recently said it plans to restore these programs and expand the loudspeaker network. Critics say the plan reflects the outdated thinking of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam, and that the speakers have no place in the civic life of a one-party state.
“I don’t like them anymore because they’re too intrusive,” Lap said. “They play revolutionary music full of unnecessary lyrics.”
A long history
During the French colonial period of Vietnam, Communist Party cadres used portable loudspeakers in the northern countryside to recruit supporters or warn of French advances, Australian journalist Peter Mares wrote in an essay published in 2000.
After Vietnam gained independence by defeating France in 1954, loudspeaker broadcasts became a regular feature of the Communist Party’s sprawling, Soviet-style propaganda machine. They then provide important updates on Hanoi, the city that was bombed by the US ruin a hospital and other infrastructure and often force residents to take shelter underground.
Speakers also broadcast propaganda to the Hanoi prison John McCaina young Navy pilot whose plane was shot down in 1967 by a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile.
During a visit to the city 33 years later, McCain, then a US senator, said he remembers listening to the daily radio programs of Trinh Thi Ngoa soft-spoken broadcaster known to the Americans as Hanoi Hannah, on a loudspeaker hanging from the ceiling of his cell.
“She was a great entertainer,” he said. “I’m surprised she didn’t make it to Hollywood.”
A fading ritual
For decades after North Vietnam won the war in 1975, officials used loudspeakers to broadcast party propaganda, patriotic music, and city announcements. In the early post-war years, most Vietnamese families were poor and did not have televisions, so broadcasts were an effective way to reach them, says Chinh Duong, an architect and political analyst, said in an interview.
The broadcasts continued even as Vietnam got richer and got internet. For decades, they started at 6:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and opened with a polite greeting.”Ladies and Gentlemen. “
At the turn of the century, there were about 900,000 loudspeakers across Vietnam, Mares wrote at the time, and the broadcasts demonstrated the party’s failure to “generate revolutionary enthusiasm.” .
However, the Communist Party still controls the kind of news, ideas, and information that reach its citizens, “preventing criticism of the regime and fierce debate about its policies and performance.” it,” he added. “In this sense, the morning radio ritual is a daily reminder that party power still extends deep into society.”
Planning for a revival
Speaker systems still operate in about a third of Vietnam’s 63 major cities and provinces. But over time, they don’t seem like the younger Vietnamese generation, who get much of their information through Facebook and other social media platforms.
In a 2017 survey organized by the Hanoi city government, 90% of respondents said they think the city’s loudspeaker system should be abolished. City officials said that year although the speakers would stay, they would only be used for emergencies.
“If the speakers are no longer effective, I strongly recommend getting rid of them.” said the mayor of Hanoi at that timeNguyen Duc Chung, who was sacked in June in a corruption scandal. “They fulfilled their mission.”
Although loudspeakers played a cameo role in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, when officials used them to distribute real-time updates and combat medical misinformation, otherwise they wouldn’t have worked.
But this year, the Hanoi city government approved a communication strategy that includes the plan revive regular broadcasts and expand the loudspeaker network by 2025. It is unclear exactly when the loudspeakers will be operational, and officials have not provided much rationale for the plan. Some analysts see it as an attempt by the city government to control society.
After a public outcry, a spokesman for the Department of Information and Communications told reporters last month that the broadcasts would only take place twice a day and only on weekdays. week.
However, many Hanoians are still frustrated by this plan. Vietnam’s state media have acknowledged that critics see it as “outdated and inappropriate.“
In the harsh postwar years of Vietnam, a time of food shortages and rations, playing a joyful patriotic song on a public speaker was a good way to vent difficulties, Pham Ngan, 52, museum curator, said.
Ngan said it would still be possible to use the speaker for important announcements from time to time, but broadcasting news and other information that people could easily find on the phone screen would make no sense. “The reality in this day and age – in the middle of a big city, capital – makes that clearly unnecessary,” she said.
Dan Doan, 19, a university student in Hanoi, describes loudspeakers as an “extremely outdated technology”.
“Imagine: You’re trying to sleep, and your house is next to the speaker,” she says. “What are you going to do? Personally, I want to throw stones to silence it.”
Chau Doan report from Hanoi, and Mike Ives from Seoul.
