Vietnamese Benedictines condemn authorities' 'terrorism'
Monks accuse Thue Thien Hue government of organizing violent acts that 'go
against civilized behavior'
UCA News reporter, Thua Thien Hue
August 16,
2020
Benedictine
monks in central Vietnam have publicly called on government-led land grabbers to
end their "acts of terrorism" against them and respect human rights.
The monks
accused the Thua Thien Hue provincial government of organizing and sponsoring a
group of 40 land grabbers to penetrate their monastery on Aug. 11-12 while local
people were taking social distancing measures to stem the Covid-19 pandemic.
They said
land grabbers with placards and leaflets “threatened and terrorized us and
vilified our monastic life.”
They said
they had identified those who led the attackers as officials from the People’s
Committee of Thuy Bang Commune and security officers who had broken into the
monastery on Aug. 10.
The
Benedictines said the assailants used loudspeakers to slander the Catholic
Church as they did in June 2017 when they smashed the crucified statue on a
cross and brutally beat many monks.
The monks
said the provincial government’s constant violent acts “go against civilized
behavior and treat Catholics like hostile forces in order to remove them out of
social activities in the province.”
“In God’s
love, we wish those individuals and agencies to behave well and respect basic
human rights and dignity by law,” Father Andrew Thong Nguyen Van Tam, superior
of Thien An Monastery, said in a press release on Aug. 14.
Father Tam
asked them to immediately end gathering security officers and gangsters to
terrorize the monastery and disrespecting the monks’ dignity and honor.
He also
urged foreign diplomats, rights groups and people of other faiths to take
necessary measures to protect the monks’ reason, interests and truth.
A local
Catholic told UCA News that local government authorities set up a station near
the monastery’s gate and checked all people who want to visit the monks. They
also erected a 100-meter-long barbed wire fence preventing the monks from
approaching a lake in the disputed area.
Disputes
between the monks and the government have lasted for decades since the
government forcibly appropriated their properties and facilities after 1975. A
state-run company sold many plots to local people and officials who built houses
and restaurants.
The monks
started to cultivate their 106-hectare land and pine forests in 1940.
The monks
have filed petitions many times to demand local government authorities return
their properties, but they got no response from the government.
Property
disputes between the people and government authorities are rampant in the
Southeast Asian country as the communist government refuses to recognize private
ownership of property.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |