Late on a Tuesday evening, sitting four floors up in a Ho Chi Minh City cafe overlooking the city’s landmark opera house, a worried man who used the pseudonym Long had the look of someone who thought he was being watched.
"I drove around the city for 45 minutes before heading here," he said, hunched over and leaning forward on his seat in a restaurant that was almost empty. Looking around edgily, he said softly, "I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being followed."
At the heart of Long’s problems, and that of his fellow members of a Mennonite Church offshoot, is what they deem to be unfair land seizures that are then turned over to major companies for development by the Vietnamese government. The state maintains sole ownership of land and confiscation in the name of economic development is a continuing irritation. Landowners frequently complain about unfair compensation and criticize the laws on land use, which they say are often abused by corrupt local officials.
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