The Administration's Security Measures

    Charges and Arrests

Religious practices by members of pure Hoax Hao Buddhism were forbidden. No religious celebration was permitted to practice even within the residence. In March 2000, the security police burst into the house of Truong Van Thuc, a prestigious Hoa Hao adept in the hamlet of Thoai Son, while he was celebrating the anniversary of death of a family member. The agents of the communal security police executed an act of  brutal violence against the victim and his fellow believers without justification, beating and dispersing the 13 participants at the ceremony. Two old men were injured and brought to the hospital. Two younger participants were  seriously injured. They nevertheless refused to be taken care of by the public health service as a protest against the interference of the authorities in religious service. Three other participants were arrested.

On March 23, 2000, Truong Van Thuc and ten other Hoa Hao adepts sent a letter of protest to the Prime Minister and the Secretary-general of the Vietnamese Communist Party to protest against the brutality of the police and demanded for the liberation of the adepts who were being detained. A delegation from the People’s Office of Public Prosecutors of An Giang effected an on-the-spot investigation on the matter and an examination on the claims by the signatories of the letter of protest. Having suffered a string of interrogations, they were all  released, but Truong Van Thuc was arrested the following day.  

    

To mete out opposition to the State of the Hoa Hao adepts, the local authorities stepped up police search-and destroy operations against the adepts from inside and outside the local community, obliterating any religious r activity, if necessary. They obstructed parties of pilgrimage  to the Hoa Hao Holy See to attend the anniversary of death  for  the Church’s Founding Father. On March 28, 2000, the security police penetrated the Hoa Hao Holy Site to arrest a number of Pure Hoa Hao Buddhists among whom was Truong Van Thuc. The police charged him with such unfounded crimes as activating an “anti--government” scheme.  He was led, his hands in handcuffs, to the An Giang prison where he was incarcerated without a trial. That was not the first time when a Hoa Hao adept was falsely charged and imprisoned.  

Fervent Hoa Hao Buddhists are always a prime target of persecution in and outside the prison. The Overseas Bureau of Hoa Hao Buddhism informed human rights organizations of the cruelty a Hoa Hao inmate had to suffer.  On the morning of Tuesday, September 26, 2000, the People’s Court of An Giang in a trial that lasted only several hours convicted six Hoa Hao adepts to diverse penalties. The two principal convicts were Nguyen Chau Lang  and Tran Van Be were convicted to 3 years in prison.  Three others were given each a penalty of three years in prison,  and  the sixth convict, one year in prison. The accusations the court had attributed to them were “to have abused democratic rights, troubled social order, and resisted government officials’ enforcement of the law,” having failed to produce evidences of any kind.

      

The six convicts were arrested at the end of March 2000. Previously, on March 20, one of them, Truong Van Thuc, and 10 Hoa Hao adepts had sent a complaint to the prime-minister and secretary-general of the  Communist Party of Vietnam to protest against the police brutality against Hoa Hao Buddhists and demanded the liberation of three imprisoned Hoa Hao adepts. The arrests were destined to obstruct the preparations for the celebration of the anniversary of the death of the founder of Hoa Hao Buddhism, His Holiness Huynh Phu So, scheduled on March 30, 2000. The To Dinh  (ancestral temple), the birth place of the founder, where the ceremony would take place had been surrounded by a chain of police checkpoints.

On Monday, March 25, a demonstration, an act of protest of pure Hoa Hao Buddhism  against the unjust trial took place outside the court room while the court was in session. One of the convicts, of September 26, 2000, Nguyen Chau Lang, who was incarcerated on September 26, 2000  allegedly on false charge at Bang Lang prison, was  subject to ill-treatment by the prison guards. They ordered him to cut off his coiled-up hair --a traditional hair style-- and his beard that are borne by pure and fervent Hoax Halo adepts as marks of their adherence to their faith. The convict, resisted in vain and was strangled and choked by the prison guards who forced him into submission . He could not drink  and eat for many days after that.

The sources further mentioned that Nguyen Day Tam of Phi My in the province of An Gang, another Hoax Halo adept, of prestige, was placed under house surveillance on unfounded charge for two years. This measure was carried out on order of the People's Council of the province of An Gang of September 14, accusing Nguyen Day Tam of "having retained and reproduced documents of distortions, inciting hatred, and appealing for opposition to overthrow the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."  In truth, during a house search at Nguyen Duy Tam’s residence, the police found several disks on which a certain number of emissions in Vietnamese of the Radio Free Asia were recorded. Nguyen had been targeted with suspicion, being a signatory of a complaint against the local authorities   and a participant in a public protest.

      

Unable to hold wrath, hundreds of Hoa Hao adepts managed to come to Long Xuyen, the township of An Giang Province to rally a  protest in front of the Bang Lang prison where the ten victims of repression were imprisoned. They were stopped then dispersed by the local police.  Ahead oh the incident, several Hoa Hao adepts had been arrested by the police in the outskirts of Saigon. Hoa Hao followers from An Giang were stopped from coming to the metropolitan city. Some were arrested; others were put under house surveillance. Among the Hoa Hao arrested in Saigon was the secretary of the legitimate Hoa Hao Buddhist Church Ha Hanh. He was brought back to An Giang and was placed under detention in the prison of Cho Moi.On October 17, 2000, the spokesperson of the Vietnamese Foreign Affairs, in a press conference, qualified  the accusations against the authorities by the Overseas Bureau of Hoa Hao Buddhism as pure invention. However, she added that the prisoners had bowed to the internal regulations of the prison.

      The Repression

The conflict between the civil authorities and pure Hoa Hao Buddhists who resisted the patronage of State-installed Committee of Administration doubled the intensity on the occasion of the anniversary of birth of the founder of the Church. On December 7, 2000, a demonstration in support for the Hoa Hao responsible Ha Hai, who was imprisoned at Cho Mo rolled out.  It was severely repressed. Protests ensued. Repression continued. In the repression of December 20, many adepts among whom was the 81-year-old Hoa Haot leader Le Quang Liem were bludgeoned.   

     

Before the Holy Day, the police had posted its agents all along the waterways to Hoa Hao Village, Tan Chau District, An Giang Province. Regardless of the authorities’ obstruction, thousands of adepts coming from all parts of the country, largely in small river boats, sailed to To Dinh (the Ancestral Temple) even though  the holy place was tightly locked up by the State-installed Hoa Hao Committee of Administration. In various areas along the road to the Ancestral Temple,  the police used tear gas grenades to disperse crowds of pilgrims. Many of them  were brutality beaten. Police forces threw off their clothing or tore it off. The venerable Le Quang Liem was bludgeoned. Others were injured.  The spokesman of Hoa Hao Buddhism Truong Van Duc, being forced into submission, protested against police acts of brutality of the authorities. He was dragged  to the Phu My prison.  Later, he was released in a coma and brought back to his domicile.  The venerable Le Quang Liem was forced to return to Saigon, with bruises on his face and shoulders.

     

    

The Resistance to Persecution of  Legitimate Hoa Hao Buddhism    

On the 62nd anniversary of the foundation of Hoa Hao Buddhism (2001), the Church officially proclaimed in a circular the unshakable determination of its leadership and faithful to preserve and protect the legitimate Hoa Hao Buddhism whose religious quintessence is translated in the teachings of His Holiness Huynh and whose filial piety tenets that  are well versed in the Vietnamese spirit of harmony and benevolence of Buddhism. Many Hoa Hao religious have professed their faith and devotion to this religious cause. In a letter published in the review Duoc Tu Bi (Torch of Compassion), Vo Thanh Liem, a respectable Hoa Hao religious, drew up a list of  instances of harassment he had suffered since his engagement in religious services and vowed to loyally commit to the service of legitimate Hoa Hao Buddhist cause. In his post-scripted, Vo Van Thanh Liem whose religious name is Nhat Quang Minh listed all affronts  inflicted on him since 1975 until then. He had been arrested and put into prison 22 times by the local authorities on unfounded  or false charges..

The religious reported, on January 31, 2001, the police made an incursion into his pagoda, destroyed the construction of a hostelry on the land of the pagoda. Having failed to arrest the religious, who resisted the arrest  behind closed doors, the police broke in and destroyed some articles of cult.  On October 31, the 15th day of the lunar month when the community of Hoa Hao were assembling in the interior of his pagoda to attend a preaching through the loudspeakers, the agents of the Fatherland Front and the security police surrounded the place of cult and intimidate the adepts in attendance. Two days later, the attendants at the preaching were called to a “session of work”  at the headquarters of the commune and interrogated. On November 6, the local authorities convoked the attendants to inform them  of the violations of the law that Vo Van Thanh Liem had committed . He had constructed without permission a hostelry, organized a session of preaching on the writings of the founder without authorization, organized the activities of opposition against the local authorities, and so on. Besides, he had never replied to the convocations that the local authorities had sent to him.

Under no circumstance had the religious made protest  against the allegation attributed to him by the security police. He suffered injustice in peaceful resistance. The police then launched an operation with a troop of  people to attack on his pagoda and proceeded the arrest of the religious.  Out of fear, he did not know how to react  but to climb up to the top of a tree of about 20 meters high. For two days, the police deployed a larger troop in and around the pagoda. The religious cut off himself a piece of muscle of his thigh and threw it on the group to show his unbent resistance. which act successfully made the police withdraw from the place. However, it  laid siege on the pagoda. On November 9, the police no longer allowed the religious to stay in his position high in the tree. He descended on the ground but wrote a letter “at unbent will.” If the police force penetrated the pagoda again, he would commit suicide or immolate himself by fire as an act of protest against the Communist authorities in an instance of religious persecution of which he was the victim.

Persecution made fervent Hoa Hao Buddhists evade the country and sought asylum in Cambodia. On January 15, 2001, the People’s Court of An Giang sentenced Bui Van Hue to three years in prison for breaking the law on house surveillance. Bui had been put under house surveillance since 1999 and left for Phnom Penh without the authorities’ permission. He was arrested by the Phnom Penh authorities and transferred to the Vietnamese authorities. Other resilient adepts of the Church resisted persecution and suffered repression.

Destruction of Worship Places

The local authorities of My Dong Ward in cooperation with the security on July 19, 2012, proceeded with its  land eviction at the Cao Dai Temple area in the township of Phan Rang, Ninh Thuan Province. They brought down the temple without a notice to members of the Church there. The temple had been under construction since 1951. In 1987, while it was still being constructed, the security police arrested  the representatives responsible  for the construction of the local Church  and ordered them to hand it over to the State. The church  officials nevertheless refused to comply with the order. The authorities of My Hai Commune drew up minutes, accusing  one of them of  behaving like a thug. Incidents of oppression as such happened again and again in My Dong. Members of the Church  made multiple claims beside competent authorities; no solution came to avail, however. The State-affiliated Cao Dai Church at Tay Ninh suggested that there must be a proper solution. A piece of fertile  land should be exchanged for compensation.  However, an area of hollow land was given in exchange without any other compensation for the premises taken down by the authorities, instead. Without proper compensation, the members of the Church at My Dong could in no way construct a new one. Complaints were, again, made to high competent authorities.

Nguyen Dinh Lien, Vice-director of the Department of Religious Affairs of Ninh Thuan Province, evaded the question over the problem in question and kept silence. The authorities of My Dong Commune maintained that there had already been conspiracy of silence on the part of the Cao Dai Church at Tay Ninh and the authorities.  On March 5, 2013, the local authorities of Long Binh District, Tien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta broke into the temple of a branch of legitimate Cao Dai Church.  The police got in, assaulted an assembly of  60 members who were attending ceremony at the temple. Police disbanded the assembly and told the leader to hand over the control and ordered the attendants to go to and practice faith at a State-affiliated temple. The worshippers resisted. Some were beaten; others were  handcuffed, and six of them among whom was Le Ngoc Diep, the temple guardian,  were arrested and  detained.  Temple members claimed that “they only serve faith. They need to keep this temple so that can follow the traditions as they have in the past. They don’t need legal status”  The group had refused earlier the authorities’ order to surrender the facility to the State-affiliate Church at Tay Ninh. 

Sources said that on June 11, 2014, local authorities and officials of the State-affiliated Church at My Dong had thugs thrown excrement and filth  on the worshippers while they were performing religious services at a place of cult. These bad elements were also given order to chain the wheels of the vehicles of the worshippers who attended the services. These are punishing measures common used by the authorities to place under control Dissident Cao Dai who refuse to affiliate with the State-sanctioned Cao Dai Administrative Council at Tay Ninh. 

THE HOA HAO BUDDHIST CHURCH

The State Elimination of Legitimate Hoa Hao Buddhism

  

The struggle for religious faith of legitimate Hoa Hao Buddhism was enduring and challenging. Not only do Hoa Hao faithful face constant State repression but also have to take risk to preserve faith and fight for survival. To pacify members of the Church, the authorities sought to reconcile with church leaders, wooing them to join the Party affiliates in a State-instituted directory “to normalize” the Church’s affairs. On May 20, 1999, under the patronage of the State, a congress of Hoa Hao Buddhism voted on the nomination of 11 selected members of the Council of Administration. Nguyen Van Ton alias Muoi Ton, a protégé of the administration, was nominated the chairman. This was an effort on the part of the authorities to replace the leaders of the legitimate Church with the State affiliates. This new organ would officially represent the entire laity of Hoa Hao Buddhism and operate under the supervision of the State through the intermediary coordination of the Fatherland Front. This process of “normalization” of the Church, according to the administration, should follow methods of application established for non-authorized factions of any other religions.

The new council nevertheless met with resistance from the majority of various Hoa Hao congregations. The veteran leaders, particularly the venerable Le Quang Liem, firmly professed to revere the religious principles as inscribed in the Sacred Books of Teachings by the Master of the Church, legitimate lines of organization of the Church,  and traditional practices of the Church. To preserve legitimacy, the Church began to function with the aegis of Hoa Hao Thuan Tuy  (Pure Hoa Hao Buddhism). The Church then has unavoidably faced with constant persecution ever since.  

To cope with increasing persecution, a Council of Elders for the Protection of Hoa Hao Buddhism comprising long-standing members of the rational Hoa Hao Buddhism was formed. The new leadership practiced new lines of direction, observing Hoa Hao faith in silence acceding to the laws of change but resiliently meting out oppression following the law of struggle "where there is oppression, there is  resistance."  The reality shows that, following the takeover of South Vietnam in April 1975, the Communist administration has brutally forbidden  the masses of Hoa Hao Buddhist to serve their faith. Hoa Hao worshippers have stood firm to preserve their faith although with sacrifices and sufferings. The new leadership called for support from Vietnamese leaders inside and oversees and world personalities and organizations and vowed to persistently struggle for religious faith and national urbanity.

Following the foundation of the Council of Elders, independent factions of pure Hoax Halo Buddhism hold firm resistance and received warm spiritual support from friendly religious circles in the country. The Reverend Chan Tin, a Catholic priest, a prominent advocate for democracy and freedom, nationwide, associated himself with members of legitimate Hoax Halo Buddhism.  He publicly protested against the State’s repressive measures the Church. The priest circulated his appeal for support for the venerable Le Quant  Lime and Hoax Halo adepts.  In the text, dated December 1, 1999, the priest denounced  brutal acts of violence  that the authorities had inflicted on the people of the province of An Giang most of whom were Hoa Hao believers. These practices of terror, immersed in fear the entire population in the province. Involved in the action were the authorities of the province, among whom were the secretary of the  section of the Communist Party of the province, the chairman of the People’s Council of the province, and  the chairman of the Fatherland Front of the province. The priest affirmed that “they were the haughtiest state officials notorious for extortion and flaunted themselves above “everyone else in all over the Mekong Delta.” They were those State cadres who rolled in money and possessed luxurious residences that were worth of billions of “dong,”  which barefaced act even the central administration was at a loss to disaffirm.

The priest equally specified that the local administration had executed malicious practices  against Hoa Hao Buddhism with the publication of articles denigrating the religion and ridiculing its founder of the Church in the official review An Ninh The Gioi (The Police World Security). The appeal called for the respect for human rights and the abrogation of Article 4 of the 1992 Constitution which, in his view,  immerses the country under the thumb of the Communist Party of Vietnam. He  demanded an immediate dissolution of the servile Hoa Hao Committee of Representatives that solely consisted of the henchmen of the regime.

Suppression followed suit. On December 26, 1999, the security forces arrested Hoa Hao adepts when they went to To Dinh (Ancestral Temple) to prepare for the Church’s anniversary celebration. This commemoration of the death of the Founder of Hoa Hao Buddhism is to the Communist a reminder an act of bad faith and betrayal to the Communist Viet Minh. Hoa Hao believers, on the contrary, ever consider this a vile fabrication.  The founder of the Church was practically assassinated by the Viet Minh, and his death is commemorated by the Hoa Hao faithful on February 25 every year). This yearly commemoration ceremony is forbidden by the actual political regime. Police raids, attempts of intimidation, and arrests on unfounded charges ate the common practices. They were  part of a  of repression programs destined to prevent the Hoa Hao  faithful  to organize, attend, and celebrate Holy Days. To the authorities, celebrations of this kind not only creates a “show of force” but also a manifestation of resistance against the regime of the pure Hoa Hao, which  act of defiance the authorities cannot look the other way.

On this day of celebration, the To Dinah, the birthplace of the Founder of Hoa Hao, was surrounded by a chain of police checkpoints aimed  to  block all entrances to the site. Reports from the Hoa Hao community in the United States said that telephone communication was cut off.  A little less than ten thousand Hoa Hao adepts were waiting for this even to take place. Repression was on the way. the resistance persisted, and the event rolled on in chaos. Police detained the worshipers without a charge.  Under detention, the adepts suffered ill-treatment. They were released only after the intervention of U.S. Congress and, particularly, the expression of  deep  concern about religious freedom in Vietnam of the Honorable Christ Smith whom the Hoes Halo adepts had met several days before that. Sources said that right after their liberation when dispossession of the Church's properties was in full swing , they repeatedly sent  letters of protest to Vietnam Prime Minister and the Supreme People’s Court to present their case, but no answer came to avail (Truing Tan. Report on Religious Persecution. February 2000)