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.