Vietnam’s “street knights,” hurtling through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, are not your typical medieval warriors.
Their stallions are scooters. They wear rubber flip-flops, not metal boots and their armor is a tracksuit jacket billowing like a cape.
The band of bike-riding unpaid vigilantes chases down petty criminals in Vietnam’s largest city and the neighboring province of Binh Duong, where residents grumble about rising crime and ineffectual policing.
Photo: Reuters
“Whenever there’s a call I show up,” said Nguyen Thanh Hai, who gets 50 to 100 calls for help every day about robberies, drugs and even kidnappings. “Even at midnight, when I can barely keep my eyes open.”
Hai, 47, keeps a notebook recording details of the roughly 4,000 criminals he has helped catch and turn over to police during 21 years as a part-time crime fighter, although he gets no monetary reward.
“You don’t think about money when you do this,” he added.
He is among a group of about 30 men in Ho Chi Minh City and 1,500 in the province, who have modified their bikes with police-like sirens and upgraded engines that can reach speeds of more than 170kph.
Videos of their high-speed chases have gone viral on social media. One shows thieves weaving between trucks and cars along a twisting, suburban highway, with the group in hot pursuit.
“My little son gets so excited when he sees me on YouTube,” said Pham Tan Thanh, a 31-year-old Binh Duong taxi driver who becomes a street knight in his spare time. “He always asks me when I’m going to go out again.”
The men do not see themselves as heroes, they said, but they do appreciate the occasional gesture of thanks, with Southeast Asia’s famously pungent-smelling durian fruit being a favorite.
Crime is low in Communist-ruled Vietnam, but petty theft and similar minor crimes are a growing problem in urban areas like Ho Chi Minh City, home to 8.6 million people.
Last year, the former Saigon ranked as the third-least safe city worldwide, after Caracas and Karachi, on the Safe Cities Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit, which rates personal security in 60 cities.
Some crime victims, hoping for a faster response, turn to the vigilantes before the police.
“Police have so many jobs, we just can’t blame them,” said one of them, Nguyen Viet Sin, whose father is a policeman. “If everyone shares the effort, society will be much better.”
Police in Ho Chi Minh City are underfunded and lacked training, the US government said in a report on crime and safety last year.
The city’s police department did not immediately comment when contacted, but some vigilantes say they work closely with officers.
Barred by law from carrying weapons, many have received police training on legal issues and use martial arts for self-defense, since their work can be dangerous.
Last month, two were stabbed to death in Ho Chi Minh City and three badly injured in clashes with thieves.
Sin described a fight with a suspected thief who cut himself and rubbed his blood into Sin’s wound. After learning that the suspect had HIV, Sin worried he could have been infected.
“I wanted to quit, but after I recovered and could still see clips of robberies on social media, I hit the road again,” he said.
After the two deaths, worried families begged some of the vigilantes to stop.
“My fiancee asked me to quit and I agreed,” said Mai Truong Xuan Huy, a 44-year-old Vietnamese-American who works as a security guard in California.
Huy, who left Vietnam in the 1990s, returns to spend his summers fighting crime.
“I feel so proud every time I help someone, but it’s also very tiring,” he said at a Binh Duong coffee shop that is an unofficial group headquarters. “I’ve been pepper-sprayed and had my head smashed.”
His ruminations on leaving the group were interrupted by two people asking for help. Huy and his friends jumped on their bikes.
“I can’t help it,” he said as he sped off. “It’s in my blood.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not