RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

 

Religious Intolerance

By Van Nguyen




The State of Vietnam always takes pride in its records of human rights in foreign affairs and political propaganda. Religious freedom is differentially defined as a basic right in the constitution. The official media chines in withpraise. The Communist Party of Vietnam and State are faithful to this principle, promoting the right to religious freedom of the citizen. There is no such thing as political prisoner or prisoner of conscience in Vietnam. The administration abides by international and domestic laws. Curiously enough, peaceful advocates for freedom, democracy, and human rights in the country face harsh treatment, arrest, and imprisonment on criminal charges such as infringements on public disorder and national security. Hundreds of religious leaders, dignitaries, and laymen of all faiths have served terms of prison and/or house surveillance for the protection of the rights to religious worship. Obstruction to international intervention and support is common. Quite a few world rights personalities are barred from entering Vietnam to make contacts with the dissidents or to investigate the rights situation.

International personalities and agencies expressed concerns over such a repressive religious policy. In a letter sent to Nguyen Tan Chieu, the Ambassador of Vietnam to the United States, Msgr. John H. Ricardo President of the Episcopal Commission for International Politics expressed profound disquiet of the U.S. Catholic Church as regards “the violent repression” against the Vietnamese Christians and the detention of the Catholic priest Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly. The letter specifically reminded the latest tragic incidents affecting the Montagards or “the Dega people.”” The majority of these Christians, who had been treated with brutality for years, still suffered violent repression. Concerning the “heart-rending” case of Fr. Nguyen Van Ly, the letter stressed the miserable repressive conditions under which the priest lived his faith and struggled for religious freedom. The letter asked the ambassador to transmit to his government the expression of disquiet of the U.S. Catholic Church with regard to this matter. Abuses of power continually took place. The U.S. State Department, in particular, included Vietnam in list of the countries of particular concern (CPC).

In February 2002, the Commission for Religious Freedom of the Evangelical Alliance in Canada published a report on the situation of human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam. Observations and remarks were made on the character of the single-party rule. The report noted that Vietnam is one of the five communist countries of the world.  It governs its 80 million inhabitants by one of its policies of which the world could realize the tragic condition man suffers in the twentieth century. In the manner of China, it has rejected much of the Marxist ideology that permits the citizen to do private business. The economy makes progress, although half of the population continues to live in poverty. It still hangs up on a Marxist dogma by which it perpetuates the domination of the Communist Party on every aspect of the political and social life of the people, to institute it a principle in the Constitution. Political opposition is forbidden. The freedom of the press does not exist. All mass medias operate under the control of the State. There is no independent justice.  Independent labor unions are outlawed. 

The Constitution of Vietnam contains an article on religious freedom, but it is very much obsolete as compared to the dispositions provided by international rights treaties to which Vietnam is a signatory such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The believers of all faiths face criminal charges from the government for ungrounded reasons. Religious freedom should be practiced in accordance with the arbitrary laws of Vietnam. Decrees on the religion explain in confusion with a multitude of notes and circulars preyed to capricious interpretations by the local authorities who are hostile to the religion. Of most curiosity, when these laws embarrass the government and appear to favorite the believer, the authorities ignore them conveniently and the believers become the object of “administrative arrests” and of condemnations,” the domain where the frail jurisprudence of the country, in a way, stays aside. Moreover, these authorities are clever in the art of utilizing shifts and false pretenses to brutalize and abuse the believer. The Vietnamese “laws” in practice, situate well in the side of international standards. The least legal protection given to the believer is ignored. All religions are viewed as the hostile forces, and advocates for the rights, the enemies to the regime. Pham the Duyet, a Politburo member and President of the Fatherland Front makes more explicit in a conceptual frame of policy, when referring to Christianity, the potential hostile force to the regime, said as follows “America has lost the war with bombs and canons. The enemies of Vietnam have never abandoned the struggle against the revolution of the people. Their new strategy is ‘political evolution,’ and their arms are the tenets of human rights, democracy, and religious freedom. The vanguard of this new attack is the Evangelical Christianity. Just see how the Churches have helped to overthrow the regimes in Europe.”       


On the occasion of the new lunar tear Quy Mui (2003), the Most Venerable Thich Huyen Quang sent a message to the Vietnamese Buddhists in which he encourages firm resistance against political and religious repression and end in a non-violence struggle for democracy, religious freedom, and respect for human rights.  The religious, aged 85, is the highest dignitary of that important part of Vietnamese Buddhism who refused to rally with the Buddhist Church of Vietnam founded in 1981 under the sponsorship of the Fatherland Front of Vietnam and the Bureau of Religious Affairs. His letter is clandestinely sent since the Quang Phuoc Pagoda in the province of Quang Mgai where he has been exiled since February 1982, as he recalls himself in the opening of the letter.


 In several lines, the religious traces a table of very dim situation of the society. Which, according to him, undergoes a serious crisis?  Moral values are in decline. Social problems multiply; gangs and robbers reign in impunity. Facing this state of things, the Buddhists must not lower their eyes or accept the situation. They must put into application in their ambiguous rule "the six Buddhist principles of the peaceful and harmonious life." The practice of these principles will contribute to building a society founded on “ethic equality," which serves to eradicate the elimination of classes and racial discrimination, and on "social equality and harmony," which serves to elevate the moral values that have increasingly marginalized the Vietnamese peasantry. The Buddhists, the religious said, must heighten their courage and participate in social action in all domains, following the examples of their ancestors.

In his conclusion, the Most Venerable Thich Huyen Quang observes that, in the history of Vietnam, the Vietnamese Buddhists, religious or laic, living in the country or abroad, wernumerous. He adds that the Buddhists of the Vietnamese diaspora today plays the role of a decisive importance, because the traditional leaders of Buddhism are today in prison or under residence surveillance or prevented from accomplishing their missions. That is why; he calls on the latter to perpetuate the spirit of Vietnamese Buddhism and to make themselves spokesmen overseas for their co-religious fellows, victims of repression in the country  

On April 19, 2004, the Most Venerable Thich Duc Chan of the Institute of the Clergy and the Most Venerable Thich Vien Dinh of the Institute of the Propagation for the Dharma of the Vietnam Unified Buddhist Church sent a letter to President Tran Duc Luong and Prime-minister Phan Van Khai requesting the liberation of the religious who had been detained. The letter stressed that the Unified Church always practiced its religious activities within the framework of the law and in conformity with rules and regulations. Nevertheless, throughout a long period of oppression, the religious underwent miserable trials to preserve faith. Authorities perpetually imposed harsh measures even on the highest leadership of the Church. The Most Venerable Thich Quang Do was still placed under residence surveillance. The whole body of clerical hierarchy of the Vietnam Unified Buddhist Church was isolated and neutralized. Four religious in charge of religious functions were officially condemned to 24 months under administrative detention. Twenty others among whom were the Patriarch Thich Huyen Quamg and the Most Venerable Thich Quang Do. They were condemned “verbally” and placed under residence surveillance without due legal procedures.

The Communist rule, nevertheless, ignored repeated calls by international rights agencies and groups to implement the rights situations in the country. It continued to imprison and detain individuals for religious activity and advocacy for religious freedom. Independent religious activity remained illegalness’ converts to ethnic minority Evangelical Christianity and members of independent sects of Hoa Hao, Cao Dai and Buddhism faced discrimination, intimidation, and pressure to renounce their faiths.