Don't let bad guys take advantage of or provoke you.

(Baonghean) - On September 10, 2013, while making a report on a fight that caused injuries between two local residents, a police officer of Nghi Phu commune was hit by a brick thrown at his desk by one of the two people. Immediately after that, he was restrained by the commune police and taken to the headquarters for questioning. There, taking advantage of his injury (from being beaten by a local resident for catching him stealing cucumbers in the garden), he banged his head on the table and cupboard, causing more bleeding while shouting for the police to beat him; demanding to call the people he called "journalists" (some of whom often wrote on websites) to "denounce"! Unfortunately, some local residents (mostly Catholics in the area) did not understand the whole story and were incited by bad guys to gather in front of the commune police headquarters, using insulting words and actions towards the officials, causing an unnecessarily tense atmosphere. Immediately afterwards, some websites also distorted the nature of the incident to slander the government!

Not following Chi Pheo’s example of slandering government officials like the above case, the two female students, both living in Nghi Phu commune, had a different way of slandering. Nearly two months ago, at noon, while riding a motorbike on Nguyen Chi Thanh street (Hung Dong commune, Vinh city), both had their bags snatched. Fortunately, a few minutes later, the two robbers were caught by passersby and handed over to the police. Here, both confessed to being Nguyen Huu Tri and Nguyen Huu Anh, both living in Le Loi ward (Vinh city). Both were prosecuted and detained immediately afterwards.

Instead of thanking the police and the people who caught the robbers and returned their property, one of the two students wrote on her personal Facebook page: "The police arranged to hit the car and rob the property." To expose the slanderous words, at the end of August 2013, Vinh City Police organized a confrontation between the two female students and the two robbers, and at the same time asked the two girls to admit to their actions of slandering the police on Facebook.
Recently, the phenomenon of slandering public agencies and officials on duty has occurred in some places in our province, causing negative impacts on public opinion. It is worth mentioning that these people also take advantage of social networking sites on the internet, take advantage of some foreign radio stations to write or answer "interviews" to distort the truth, slander the government and officials on duty. A few years ago, the blogger "Co Gai Do Long" was prosecuted for slandering others online, but it seems that the phenomenon of slandering and insulting others online has not been learned by those who are used to this habit. Thus, this behavior is even more serious, not to mention that taking advantage of the internet to defame others also violates Decree 72 of the Government that has just taken effect since September 1.

Is it a coincidence that all three people in the two cases above are Catholics, all in Nghi Phu commune. But regardless of whether they are Catholic or non-Catholic, regardless of their blood relation to anyone, the above act of “taking the blame for someone else’s misfortune” is not only against morality but also against the law. Of course, everything has its cause. Maybe, some people are ashamed of being caught stealing; others, because of prejudice against the police and the government, have misconceptions and deliberately fabricate terrible stories like the two female students? But, this is very possible, those Catholics were incited and taken advantage of by bad people, no different from the Catholics in Nghi Phuong commune who gathered to cause trouble at the commune People’s Committee headquarters on September 3 and 4.

We know that there are still problems in the way some officials handle people's affairs that need to be thoroughly considered. And, people have the right to express their attitudes towards those problems by making complaints, denunciations, and taking them to court... but slandering and insulting authorities, officials performing their duties, and even gathering to cause disturbances to public order and security are violations of the law!

Viet Long