Congressmen
Urge State Department to Return Vietnam to List of Human Rights Violators
Friday, August 20, 2010
By Jane McGrath
CNSNews
(CNSNews.com)
- Members of the a congressional human rights commission want the State
Department to reinstate Vietnam as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) after
hearing testimony Wednesday on the lack of religious freedom in the
Communist-controlled country.
“I fear that when the U.S. granted Vietnam normal trade relations in 2001, we
lost crucial leverage that puts pressure on the Vietnamese government to improve
a very poor record on human rights,” Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said at the
hearing. “Over the last year, we’ve seen Vietnam’s record on human rights and
religious freedom take a turn for the worse.”
Wolf pointed to examples of religious persecution in Vietnam, including in the
town of Con Dau, where authorities decided to “demolish all the houses in the
parish, along with a 135-year-old cemetery on parish grounds, to make way for a
green resort.” In May, police allegedly turned violent against parishioners
holding a peaceful funeral procession to protest the demolition.
In his testimony, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) described what happened during
the funeral procession: “Vietnamese officials and riot police disrupted that sad
and solemn occasion, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd,
beating mourners with batons and electric rods. More than 100 people were
injured, dozens were arrested, and several remain in custody and, reportedly,
severely beaten and tortured by Vietnamese officials. At least two innocent
people, perhaps more, have been murdered by Vietnamese police.”
Smith said the Vietnamese government justifies the violence “because the
villagers of Con Dau had previously been ordered, some through coercion, to
leave their village.” He added that they were not compensated for the
displacement, and he said nothing justifies “government-sanctioned murder and
other human rights abuses.”
Insisting that the Con Dau incident was not an isolated event, Rep. Wolfl said
that he and some congressional colleagues are calling on the Obama
administration to re-designate Vietnam as a country of particular concern. “I
understand the State department will designate CPCs in the next few months, and
I urge the State Department to add Vietnam back on the list. Considering
Vietnam’s record, he said, it would “really be a black mark” on the State
Department if Vietnam is not put back on the list.
The State Department reports that the majority of the 86 million people in
Vietnam are Buddhist. Among them, many subscribe to what’s known as a “triple
religion,” combining Mahayana Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.
Due largely to the French influence in the country, Catholics make up another 8
to 10 percent of the population. Another 4 to 9 percent consist of those who
subscribe to Hoa Hao, Cao Daie, Muslim and Protestant sects. The remaining
people do not consider themselves religious.
Because of concerns about the lack of religious freedom, the State Department
included Vietnam on the CPC list as recently as 2006. However, in that year, the
State Department lifted the CPC designation, citing significant improvements.
According to the 2009 International Religious Freedom report – the latest
submitted by the State Department – the Vietnamese government has recognized an
increasing number of religious sects in recent years.
In February 2009, representatives from the Vatican met with Vietnamese
government officials and issued a joint statement stating that “positive
progress has been made in the religious life in Vietnam.”
However, the State Department’s report did point out several continuing
problems, such as government restrictions on missionaries. The State Department
also acknowledged reports that officials have impeded religious activities based
on political activism, discouraged conversion to Protestantism and put a
Catholic priest under house arrest.
The State Department points out that Vietnam’s 2004 “Ordinance on Religion and
Belief” specifies that “the ‘abuse’ of freedom of belief or religion ‘to
undermine the country's peace, independence, and unity’ is illegal.” The law,
the State Department said, “also warns that religious activities must be
suspended if they negatively affect the cultural traditions of the nation.”
Also testifying Wednesday was Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.), a
Vietnamese-American Catholic whose father fought for the South Vietnamese Army
during the Vietnam War and was placed in a Communist re-education camp.
Cao insisted that torture in Vietnam continues to this day. “The Vietnamese
government has shown no progress on the issue of human rights.” He said that
Vietnam does not allow land ownership, but rather land use rights, allowing the
government to strip farmers of their homes and farms and turn them over to
private developers. “All land disputes with Catholic Church in Vietnam result in
violence,” he said.
Rep. Wolf said that in addition to suppressing religious freedom over the last
year, “the Vietnamese government has ratcheted up pressure on peaceful human
rights and democracy advocates, arresting numerous bloggers, lawyers and
political activists.” Wolf also took issue with the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam,
which “has repeatedly subordinated issues of human rights and religious freedom
to trade and commerce.”
The congressional human rights panel also heard testimony from Ted Van Der Meid,
commissioner at the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom (USCIRF), which Congress created in 1998 as part of the International
Religious Freedom Act to examine and analyze the state of religious freedom in
countries around the world.
“Sadly, we cannot conclude that religious freedom conditions have improved
markedly in recent years,” Van Der Meid said in his written testimony. “Vietnam
continues to backslide on human rights and there remain too many religious
freedom violations, too many individuals detained for independent religious
activity or peaceful religious freedom advocacy, too many cases of
discrimination and forced renunciations of faith targeting new converts to
Protestantism, and too many stories of government approved violence targeting
Buddhists and Catholics.”
Van Der Meid said the Con Dau case is similar to a number of violent clashes
between the Catholic Church and the Vietnamese government over property rights.
“In the last several years, disputes over religious property have led to
harassment, property destruction, detention, and violence, sometimes by
‘contract thugs’ hired by the government to break up peaceful prayer vigils,” he
said. “In addition, lawyers for those detained at peaceful prayer vigils have
been intimidated and briefly detained.”
Both Rep. Smith and Van Der Meid noted that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
has met with officials in Hanoi and expressed concern for human rights in
Vietnam. They urged her to back up her concerns with action. Smith emphasized
that CPC status officially designates a country in which there is “ongoing and
pervasive violence of religious liberties and the persecution of believers.”
Vietnam, he said, “fits that definition like a glove.”
Smith faulted both the Bush and Obama administrations for failing to link human
rights issues with trade issues.
The three congressmen testifying before the panel all reiterated their support
for the legislation they introduced in July, H. Res. 1572, which condemns the
Vietnamese government for the violence in Con Dau. Rep. Smith sponsored the
bill, which has four cosponsors, including Reps. Cao and Wolf.
Also testifying at Wednesday’s hearing were relatives of the alleged victims of
violent religious persecution in Vietnam, and T. Kumar, director of
International Advocacy at Amnesty International.