Hmong Ordered Jailed for Defying Vietnamese Government Campaign
RFA
-03/14/ 2014
A
provincial court in northern Vietnam on Friday sentenced a Hmong Christian to 18
months in jail for defying a government campaign forcing the ethnic minority
group to return to older funeral practices now considered wasteful by many in
the community.
Hoang Van Sang, 60, was handed an 18-month jail term by a court in Tuyen Quang
province for “abusing democratic rights to infringe on the State and others’
benefits” under Article 258 of Vietnam’s penal code, his lawyer Tran Thu Nam
told RFA’s Vietnamese Service on Friday.
The charges appeared to stem from Sang’s efforts to raise funds within his
community to build a funeral home to meet Hmong reforms for caring for and
burying the dead, Nam said.
Community members “contributed money to build the funeral house and assigned
Hoang Van Sang to buy materials for it,” Nam said. “No one demanded that he
return any money. There is no victim here.”
Nam added that he had urged the court and local prosecutor’s office in
considering Sang’s case to hand down only a warning rather than a criminal
conviction.
“Hoang Van Sang had only committed an administrative mistake by building the
house without official approval from the local government,” he said.
Sang, a follower of reformed burial and wedding practices proposed by Hmong
Christian leader Duong Van Minh—now in ill health in Hanoi—had at first faced a
jail term of up to 21 months, but the sentence was reduced to 18 months
following a hearing, Nam said.
Group refuses aid
The charges against Sang appeared also to be tied to a growing refusal by Hmong
to accept grain seed, subsidies for food or schooling, or other state benefits—a
move seen by authorities as interference with government development policies,
Nam said.
But Hmong community members speaking at the trial said they had not been
influenced by Sang.
“They said they had headaches from constantly listening to the local
government’s public service announcements and felt that the Hmong were being
criticized. That is why they don’t want to receive any support from the
government,” Nam said.
Six Hmong, including Sang, have now been arrested by authorities on charges
connected to the Hmong campaign, with three scheduled to stand trial on March 18
and 20.
Officials in the Northern Highlands have cracked down on reformed burial
practices in recent years, launching a campaign to force Hmong Christians to
return to old traditions involving expensive, week-long funerals, rights groups
have said.
Minh, 52, whose calls for reformed burial practices have been drawing a large
following among Hmong Christians since 1989, now suffers from a kidney ailment
but has been denied medical treatment at hospitals in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.
'Aggressive campaign'
In 2008, authorities in Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Thai Nguyen, and Tuyen Quang
provinces began an “aggressive campaign” to force Hmong Christians to return to
old burial practices by demolishing shared funeral storage facilities that
villages had built to accommodate the new practice, according to overseas rights
group Boat People SOS (BPSOS).
After a number of Hmong villages rebuilt their funeral storage facilities in
2012, the authorities last year sent in plainclothes police and thugs to destroy
the facilities and arrested a number of Hmong, the group said.
Meanwhile, in October and November, at least eight Hmong followers of Minh’s
were arrested as they protested for freedom of religion and belief, Vietnamese
citizen journalism blog Dan Lam Bao reported.
And on Nov. 23, police forces surrounded an ethnic Hmong village in Cao Bang
province and demolished their funeral storage facility, in an incident that was
followed by an attack on another Hmong village in the province the next day, Bao
said.
Reported by An Nguyen for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by
Richard Finney.