Hundreds of videos portraying sex and violence were destroyed and pornographic posters were incinerated at a public ceremony in Hanoi on Wednesday to mark the new phase of a government blitz on so-called "social evils."
Neat ranks of uniformed police officers stood in line and onlookers jostled for the best view in the central Hoan Kiem district of Vietnam's capital as sexy posters and playing cards were torn up and burned and video cassettes immersed in water."Protection against poisonous cultural items is the duty of all society," proclaimed a garish poster on the back of a truck parked alongside the crowd.
"No drug addicts. No prostitutes. No gambling," demanded another.
Billboards with similar messages have adorned the streets of Hanoi since the government announced in December that it was stepping up its morality war with a nationwide propaganda blitz.
The ritual destruction in Hoan Kiem came a day before the launch of the next stage: a full-scale clampdown on "social evils," "poisonous cultural products" and negative foreign influences.
Foreign diplomats said they read the drive as an attempt to reaffirm the leading role of the Communist Party and its socialist ideology before a landmark party congress in June.
They said it was clear the leadership was deeply worried about party disunity caused by increasingly free-wheeling party cadres, a theme highlighted by a prominent member of the powerful Politburo in a newspaper article this week.
Although delighted with the swift growth of the economy since capitalist-style reforms were launched 10 years ago, the authorities have been alarmed by the deep social changes that their more "open-door" policy has brought.
"The market-oriented economy has had the side effect of disparity between rich and poor, between city dwellers and rural people," Phan Dai Doan, a professor from the Hanoi National University, wrote in the party mouthpiece Nhan Dan this week.
"Social morality is threatened with fierce competitiveness between individual and individual, organization and organization. This disparity harms development and creates chaos in society," Doan added.