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When police came to Nguyen Van Dai's door on Feb. 8, the Vietnamese human-rights lawyer thought he was in for a routine questioning session. After all, police had summoned the high-profile dissident at least five times in the previous six months to grill him about his educational seminars on democracy. But this time was different. Dai was taken to his local People's Committee, where about 200 murmuring citizens were waiting to denounce him for crimes against society. One by one, members of the audience, most of them elderly, shuffled to the microphone to criticize Dai. "He has spread half-truths and negative information about Vietnam," accused one man in footage that was later shown on national television. Another, according to Dai's own account, declared he could no longer control his outrage at the "traitor" and rushed toward Dai shouting, "I'm so angry, I want to choke him!" Police pulled the attacker away.

Dai's ordeal sounds like a flashback from the days when Vietnam's Communist Party ruled nearly every aspect of citizens' lives, and public denunciations were used to shame the bourgeoisie and anyone questioning the party line. Such ritual ceremonies—called dau to, literally "fighting and criticism"— faded as Hanoi became more adept at stifling dissent and economic reforms loosened controls on everyday life. But with a new generation of activists like Dai agitating for change, dau to seems to be making a comeback. Out of the dozen dissidents arrested over the past four months, at least three have endured public humiliations as well. "They want to frighten us," Dai told TIME in late February. "They use the people and our neighbors to try to shame us." As Dai found out, though, Vietnam's rulers are also willing to use the courts to silence critics. He was arrested on March 6 and on May 11 was sentenced to five years in prison for "spreading propaganda against the Socialist Republic," under Article 88 of Vietnam's criminal code.

Human-rights groups say the spate of public denunciations is part of a political crackdown that is the harshest in 20 years—and one that the government wants everyone to know about. In the past, Hanoi would often arrest and prosecute its opponents with little fanfare. But during the current wave of cases, foreign and local journalists have been allowed to view court hearings via televised feed, while the state-controlled media has run lengthy screeds against the defendants. This about-face is a reaction by authorities to modern realities, says Martin Gainsborough, a political scientist and Vietnam expert at the University of Bristol in the U.K. Nearly 60% of Vietnamese are under 30 years old; many are Internet literate and able to access news and information from the outside world. There's no point in downplaying a political crackdown because people will find out about it anyway, Gainsborough says. Instead, the government has opted to use the media "to continually remind the public that [dissidents] are beyond the pale," he says. "They need to keep the dissidents and the majority of citizens apart."

In other words, Hanoi is waging a p.r. campaign. The message: dissidents are criminals bent on undermining Vietnam's political system—a system that is portrayed as increasingly open and responsive to the public. The May 20 National Assembly elections were hailed by the government as a breakthrough for democracy because independent candidates were encouraged to run, even though the Communist Party ended up with 91% of the 493 seats. And state media have published lengthy articles criticizing the West's messy multiparty systems and trumpeting "Vietnamese-style democracy"—that is, one-party rule—as a guarantor of stability and peace. "They're saying, 'This is how we do democracy, and it's a really good process ... it's something to be proud of,'" says Gainsborough.

As long as this p.r. campaign lasts, Vietnam's denouncements look set to continue, although their effectiveness may prove limited. As Dai pointed out before his arrest, most of the accusers at his denouncement were over 60, many of them war veterans: "The reason [authorities] didn't invite young people is they fear they would have laughed at the process." But as Dai well knows, Vietnam has harsher ways of dealing with dissent than a roomful of angry denouncers.

• Kay Johnson