Overview
Ever since the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1946, the religions in Vietnam have suffered all forms of repression, oppression, and suppression. Small and large religious congregations have strenuously struggled for their existence. A country of pious, religious, and peace-loving people, Vietnam has witnessed for decades the frightful privation of the rights of self-determination and human and civil rights. No sooner had she slipped from the yoke of slavery than she was tightened with the snooze of totalitarian dictatorship. As regards religions, secular constraints of all forms and in many respects imposed on her by the Communist regime systematically stifle the people, depriving them of all rights to religious freedom and force the religious to submit to the control of the Communist State and its political apparatus. The takeover of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, particularly, shakes the foundation of all grass-root religious institutions throughout the country, immersing religious faiths and shredding traditional respectable and adorable religious practices.
Ideological Premises
Vietnam is under a totalitarian political regime. The Vietnamese Communist Party shows all of its ambitions to monopolize the power to govern the entire Vietnamese people and shape the development of society and the life of the individuals that constitute it. It considers itself the savior and leader of the nation. It empowers itself with the constitutional rights to the leadership of the people. It vests itself with the mission to bring into play what it calls the socialist transformation of the nation. None of the sectors of the political and civil life could escape from it.
Despite the 1992 Constitution states the division of power between the Party and the State and guarantees all the citizen’s rights, the functioning of the actual political institutions exhibits the entreaties and the will of the Party and the State. The distinction in viewpoints, political lines, the interpretation of the laws and regulations, and the policies is virtually nominal. The Vietnamese Communist Party, in truth, decides everything. The practices of the official ideology --communism-- are the legitimate way of life. It forms the backbone of all institutions of the infra- and supra- structures of the society. It tends to institute the history of the Vietnamese people and subject them to the most rigorous obligations to serve a totalitarian regime.
Admitted to membership of the United Nations and being the signatory of international conventions on human rights by which it pledges to abide, the Vietnamese Communis Party and State nevertheless pursues pernicious totalitarianism that forcibly brings all the layers of society under its yoke of control, depriving the people of their human and civil rights.
A Historical Note
In 1940, the Japanese invaded Indochina and became the new ruler. of the peninsula. The Japanese then used the French administration as an instrument of exploitation to serve their war interests in the Southeast Asia. However, the Fascist Japanese and the Colonialist French could not coexist. On March 9, 1945, the Japanese rule overthrew the French colonial administration. Within a day, the French army throughout Indochina was disbanded. Under the patronage of the Japanese rule in Indochina, French-instituted Emperor Bao Dai in Hue declared Vietnam an independent state within the Alliance of Greater Asia. The Pham Quynh Royal Cabinet was dissolved. The Japanese-backed Cabinet under the direction of the scholar Tran Trong Kim was formed. Successive world events ensued. In Europe, The Fascist Germany-Italy Axis surrendered to the Allies. Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.
All through World War II, underground political parties and patriotic leaders relentlessly struggled for national independence. Some took side with the Japanese. Others tightened their ranks to withstand waves of ruthless repression the French rule’s white terror. Included in the first group were the Dai viet Quoc Gia Xa Hoi (Greater Nationalist Social Party) operating in the North and Viet Nam Dan Xa Dang (Vietnam National Social Democratic Party, in the South. The second group comprised the Dai Viet, (Greater Vietnam Party and, Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (Vietnam National Party) operating in Central and North Vietnam. Also included in this group were the Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi (National Revolutionary League), DaiViet Dan Chinh (Greater Vietnam Party of Civilians and Civil Servants0, and Duy Dan (The Party fur the People) operating in North Vietnam. The Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (Vietnam League for Independence), abbreviated Viet Minh distanced itself as an anti-French and -Japanese and sought cooperation with the Allies. The latter organization operated mostly in the in the mountainous region if the North.
All the parties operating in the North, except the Viet Minh, were national. They had headquarters in Hanoi and the major cities. They all served the ultimate goal, to unite the people to struggle for national independence. The Viet Minh, apart, as a organization that served the ideology peculiar to their own --communism. Due to their superior political stratagems o, the Viet Minh gained the upper hand over the national parties, staging uprisings in some mountainous provinces of North Vietnam. On August 19, 1945, they outwitted the national parties in a coup d’tat in Hanoi and acceded to power.
After the takeover of the royal government from Emperor Bao Dai, Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the Communist Party of Indochina and leader of the Viet Minh, wooed the national parties and religions leaders to cooperate with him to struggle for national sovereignty and national unity. He called on them to join with him in the fight for national sovereignty and reconstruction. They were nevertheless lured into a maze as only the Communist hard-core party members and cadres were assigned to the positions of leadership in the Front to. Plans to eliminate the military forces of national parties were at hand.
On September 5, 1945, the Ho Chi Minh government dissolved the Dai Viet Quoc Gia Xa Hoi Dang and the Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang. To mete out political opposition, on September 13 1945, it established the Military Court to intimidate opposing political parties. Whoever spoke ill of Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh was attributed to as a traitor and executed. The Court also served as a shield to stifle public opinion regarding the true entity of Nguyen Ai Quoc, Ho Chi Minh himself, an agent of the Third International. To negate the hazardous effect befalling on Ho, the Viet Minh launched counterattack operations of propaganda aimed at lowering the merits of the national parties and depreciating their sacrifices for national independence. They denigrated the achievements of national parties, especially the prestigious Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang. Revolutionary parties leaders such as Nguyen Hai Than, Nguyen Tuong Tam, Nhuong Tong Hoang Pham Tran, and Truong Tu Anh whom the Communists attributed to as Viet gian-- the traitors were targeted with violence and death threats.
On September 23, 1945, the French, with the help of the British army that took the surrender of the Japanese troops in Indochina south of the 16th Parallel, attacked Saigon to retake Vietnam on the order of General De Gaulle of France. The War of Resistance began and spread to North Vietnam. Facing the danger, Ho Chi Minh, again, turned to the national parties and the religions for support, He called for national union. In reality, he sought to come out of the political pressure by the national parties, on one hand, and the heavy military attacks by the French Expeditionary Corps, on the other. To their disadvantage, the Communists in the North were at the same time subdued by the Chinese Koumintang troops under the command of Lu Han that came to disarm the Japanese troops from the 16th Parallel up north. To explain away the doubts about his attitude of the national parties’ and religions’ leaders, on November 11, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared to dissolve the Communist Party of Indochina. He founded in its place the Club for the Studies of Marxism, nevertheless. On December 22, 1945, he signed an agreement with his Nationalist opponents, giving them five cabinet posts in the government and 70 seats in the National Assembly.
Without world recognition, the Ho Chi Minh administration could not institute for themselves national prestige to lead the people, confront difficulties, and deal effectively in both internal and foreign affairs. To consolidate their political position, Ho Chi Minh sought, on one hand, to wooed the national parties for their support. To secure his secret identity, he tried to dissimulate his true career as a veteran Third International agent to blind public opinion. On the other hand, he courted the United States for aids. He openly made peace with the French to gain their diplomatic recognition. Upon achieving his purpose, he furtively allied with the French eliminate the national parties and the religions. With the substantial political and military support from the French, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh monopolized power and successfully annihilated the national parties’ forces and suppressed the religions On March 2, 1946, the Communists signed with the French a modus vivendi. Upon completion of the agreement with the enemy, Ho Chi Minh made a volte face against. the national parties and religions. On May 17, 1946, he ordered the Viet Minh troops to launch attacks on all office facilities of the religions and residences of leaders of political parties. Political and religious leaders were arrested and killed.
Military clashes between the French Expeditionary Corps and the Viet Minh troops at the seaport of Haiphong escalated. Ho Chi Minh, again, sought support from the religions and all political parties of the country. On the celebration of Buddha's Birthday in 1946, Ho sent a letter to the Vietnam Buddhist Association denouncing the atrocities of French colonialism. The letter specified in earnest terms that the French Expeditionary Corps burned down pagodas, destroyed idols, tortured bonzes, and massacred the Buddhist faithful. He added that the national resistance under his leadership aimed to save the people from slavery and misery and that with the support of the Buddhist Church, he would fulfill his task. On December 24, 1946, he sent a letter with a similar content to the Catholic clergy. In the opening of the letter, he solemnly declared in praise: "Nearly 2,000 years ago, a saint was born to this world. He consecrated all his life to save and help mankind and sacrificed himself for freedom and equality." He called upon the Vietnamese Catholics to participate in the resistance to protect the country and religious freedom.
The Indochina War broke out on December 19, 1946. The Ho coalition government ceased to exist as a result of the Viet Minh’s annihilation of national parties. The Viet Minh found it more important than ever before to carry out their non-controversial program on which they claimed all the different elements opposing the French could unite-- whether they were Communists, Socialists, Democrats, former mandarins of the imperial court at Hue or members of the bourgeoisie or peasantry, religious or non-religious, Catholic or non-Catholics, Buddhists or non-Buddhists, Communists,. (Gettleman, Ibid. 1965: 76).
During the first year of the war of resistance, the Ho Chi Minh government maintained peaceful relationship with the religions, courting them into its allies. The Lien Viet Front was created to absorb all Communist satellite organizations and the religions. Nevertheless, as the war went on, the Communists carried out the same measures they had learned from the Soviet Union and Communist China to eradicate the national parties and neutralize the religions in the religious life.
In the parishes, the religious services of priests and monks were restricted,, provisions for Catholic novices at monasteries were denied, and the faithful were prevented from attending religious celebrations. The cadres initiated "anti-superstition campaigns" to boycott all religious services and practices. They fabricated false opposition activities to arrest the priests and monks and send them to concentration camps. Gatherings for renewal of the clergy were forbidden, and movement of guardian priests and monks outside the pagoda, cathedral, and worship place was under surveillance. To dominate the religions, the Communist Party created the United Patriotic Religious Committees to replace the representatives of the Churches with its cadres. All religions were under the control of the Party and State.
No comments:
Post a Comment