VNExpress-Nov 23
Quoc Cuong had to change his accent and cover his motorbike license plate so people around him would not find out that he was from the central province of Thanh Hoa during six years of studying university in Hanoi,
“Even now, I can’t forget the time a landlord flatly refused me, stating, ‘I don’t rent to people from Thanh Hoa’ when I first set foot in the capital,” said Cuong, 24. Not only was he discriminated against on the street, but Cuong was also often mimicked by friends in class. In order to fit in, he tried to correct his accent to a “standard Northern accent” to hide his hometown. When the Thanh Hoa students’ club organized a welcome party for new students, he refused to join, fearing his identity as a “Thanh Hoa person” would be exposed. On the other side, Vu Minh Hang, 28, from southern locality of Binh Duong, faced discrimination when she moved to northern locality of Nam Dinh to marry. Her husband’s family criticized ‘Southern women for being lazy and only pleasure-seeking,’ but she and her boyfriend still decided to marry. The young couple had to move out to live separately to minimize conflict. “I was so suffocated and frustrated that I wanted to leave my husband and return to South immediately,” Hang said. Victims of regional discrimination like Cuong, Hang, and Hien are not rare. This is a persistent issue in Vietnam, existing from daily life to social media. Numerous videos deliberately inciting and dividing regions are widely prevalent. Recently, the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department temporarily detained two TikTokers, Tang Keng Ong Trum and Du Bau Troi, for regularly posting videos with provocative, derogatory, insulting, and regionally divisive content. A 2024 study by the author group Huynh An Nghiep from University of Information Technology, VNU-HCM, recorded that up to 40% of the 17,000 comments under videos related to regional issues contained insulting and derogation elements. The authors suggest that centuries of partition in Vietnam have left severe consequences, contributing to the formation of stereotypes. Read more at:
