The women and police of Vietnam

We know there is a Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi and we had every intention of getting there last week.  Instead, we got distracted by the fascinating Police Museum and the equally interesting Women's Museum.

Ever since we arrived in Vietnam, we've been curious about the police.  We've heard and seen so much about them.  For instance, there are security guards on most streets, dressed in light blue shirts and dark pants.  We've also seen traffic cops in beige uniforms and security police in green uniforms.  The police and security are a pretty big deal here.

The saying above this desk says, "With the job, one must be devoted."  It is one of the teachings of Ho Chi Minh.

In the United States, when you think of the police, you think about security and protecting people, and keeping the roads safe, etc.  Those things all happen in Vietnam.  But the police have also had in their history (and might still today) the additional role of informant.  The Police Museum highlights some of the times the police have set up networks of agents and informants to help in the fight for independence.

This description of Vietnam in the 1954-1955 time caught my eye.  It references a need for the police to stop the "forced migration from the North to the South."  This was the time that Vietnam was divided in two between the communist North and the nationalist South.  Most historians do not describe the migration as "forced" but rather people fleeing the Communist government and fear of reprisals, especially Catholics.  Our tour guide even told us that the American government had come in to the country in 1955 and "forced" people to move to the South.

This flier was taken from a captured American pilot by the police during the Vietnam War.  It lists instructions in about 20 different languages, asking for safe passage if captured.

Here is a picture of the modern police, controlling the motorbike encroachment on the sidewalks.  More of this, please.

Near the end of the museum, we learned about some of the challenges facing the modern police force, including weapons (guns are not permitted) and drugs.  In Vietnam, anyone in possession of over 600 grams of heroin is executed, and possession of 300 - 600 grams of heroin brings a lifetime prison sentence.\

Hanoi's finest:

At one point we made our English language tour guide (below) a little uncomfortable.  He is studying to be a police officer, and when we asked whether the traffic police are corrupt in Hanoi (many people here think they are), he just laughed a little and said, "This is a very difficult question for me."  We let him off the hook and didn't make him elaborate, but his reaction to the question was all we needed to know.

From there we met Viet at the Vietnam Women's Museum.  While there were many interesting exhibits there -- a photo gallery, information about the family and marriages, fashions of different ethnic groups, etc., I was drawn to the floor about the role of women in Vietnam's history.

Here is a gallery of the "Grand Mothers of Vietnam", a title given out to those that lost at least two members of their family to the Vietnam War.

Women from Ha Tinh (the city with the orphanage we visited) who died in the Vietnam War:

There was a fascinating display about the small street vendors of Vietnam that we see everywhere, what their lives are like and how little money they make.  This one exhibit has encouraged us to buy as much as we can from these women, who often do not live in Hanoi but come in from small villages and stay for a couple of weeks just to make a little extra money for their families.