Religious Freedom Panel Wants Vietnam, Burma on Blacklist
By
Richard Finney - RFA
2013-04-30
A U.S. bipartisan commission
proposed Tuesday that Vietnam be returned to a State Department list of the
world’s worst violators of religious freedoms and that Burma, despite ongoing
political reforms, be maintained on the blacklist.
Vietnam, under one-party communist rule, “continues to expand control over all
religious activities [and] severely restrict independent religious practice,”
the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedoms (USCIRF) said in an
annual report.
Though religious activity has grown in Vietnam in recent years, the government
continues to “repress individuals and religious groups it views as challenging
its authority,” it said.
The State Department included Vietnam on its list of Countries of Particular
Concern (CPC) in 2004 but removed it from the blacklist two years later and has
since ignored repeated calls by the commission to reinstate the country’s
designation.
For the 2013 report, USCIRF recommended that Secretary of State John Kerry
maintain eight countries on the CPC list: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North
Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.
USCIRF also urged that in addition to Vietnam, six other countries receive CPC
designation: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
Speaking in an interview, USCIRF chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett expressed hope
that Vietnam would this year be returned to the list.
“We’re hopeful that our report will make the case,” Swett told RFA.
“The Vietnamese government is still using vague national security laws to
suppress independent Buddhists, Protestants, Hoa Hao, and Cao Dai activities,”
Swett said.
“And they are definitely working to stop the growth of ethnic minority
Protestantism and Catholicism through discrimination, instances of violence, and
repeated episodes of forced denunciations of faith.”
“It’s still a very concerning situation, and one that we believe does merit CPC
designation,” Swett said.
Uneven reforms
Though Burma took important steps during the last year to advance political
reforms in the formerly military-ruled country, “these reforms have not yet
improved religious freedom conditions,” USCIRF said, adding that Burma should
again be named a CPC.
Treatment of the country’s Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority has been especially
troubling, Swett said.
The report said that in sectarian violence over the period between June and
October 2012, more than 1,000 Rohingyas were killed—a number more than five
times higher than the official total death toll of 192 dead.
“Their villages and religious structures were destroyed [and] large numbers of
women were raped,” Swett said.
“And so despite multiple political reforms and progress in a positive direction
in the overall political situation in Burma, the religious freedom situation
remains grave enough to merit CPC status."
Violence between Muslims and Buddhists continued to occur in Burma in 2013 with
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch charging last week that Burmese authorities have
committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against
Muslim Rohingyas.
The USCIRF report said that though cases of the forced conversion of ethnic
minority Christians to Buddhism were noted in Burma, abuses also targeted clergy
of the country’s majority Buddhist faith.
“The government closely monitors monasteries viewed as focal points of
anti-government activity and has restricted usual religious practices in these
areas,” USCIRF said, adding that monks identified as protest organizers have
been charged under “vague national security provisions.”
“Sadly, these abuses appear to be occurring with impunity,” said Swett.
Deteriorating conditions
In China, religious freedom conditions “have deteriorated quite
significantly—particularly, of course, in Tibet and for Tibetan Buddhists, and
for Uyghur Muslims as well,” Swett said, adding that “China again absolutely
merits CPC designation.”
“The restriction of religious activity causes deep resentment in Tibetan and
Uyghur communities,” USCIRF noted in its report.
The Chinese government has “intensified efforts to discredit religious leaders,
issued new measures to increase government oversight of monasteries and mosques,
and implemented new ‘education’ programs to ensure the loyalty of Buddhist monks
and ‘weaken the religious consciousness’ of Uyghur Muslims.”
“There are hundreds of Tibetans and Uyghurs in prison for their religious
activity or religious freedom advocacy,” USCIRF said.
Meanwhile, Protestants who refuse to join state-approved religious organizations
face harassment and fines, detentions, and in some instances imprisonment, added
Swett.
“Their ‘house church’ activity is considered to be illegal, and our evidence is
that 900 Protestants were detained in the past year for simply conducting public
worship activities. And we believe that there are seven significant Protestant
leaders who were imprisoned for terms longer than a year.”
“The government has issued a directive to eradicate these groups,” Swett said,
adding, “A similar situation faces the independent or unregistered Catholic
community.”
China’s “most brutal” measures of religious suppression are aimed at eradicating
the Falun Gong spiritual movement, though, Swett said.
“Practitioners continue to face arbitrary arrest, forced renunciations of their
faith, torture, and psychiatric experiments.”
“And there has been some evidence of organ harvesting, particularly targeting
the Falun Gong.”
“That community continues to be on the receiving end of the most harsh and
brutal tactics used by the Chinese government when it comes to suppressing
religious freedom,” said Swett.
‘Deplorable record’
North Korea, meanwhile, “remains one of the world’s most repressive regimes,
with a deplorable human rights and religious freedom record,” USCIRF noted in
its report.
And because North Korea’s government promotes a cult of personality surrounding
the Kim dynasty of North Korean leaders, USCIRF said, “Any activity perceived to
challenge [present leader] Kim Jong Un’s legitimacy, including clandestine
religious activity, continues to be viewed as a security threat.”
“People caught transporting Bibles or engaged in any sort of missionary activity
… face torture and execution and imprisonment,” said Swett.
“The repression of all unapproved religious activities can only be described as
incredibly brutal.”
“North Korea clearly is a CPC, and I think there’s wide agreement on that,”
Swett said.
Watch List
Laos remains on USCIRF’s Tier 2 “Watch List” for continuing “serious religious
freedom abuses,” USCIRF said in its report.
Countries on the Tier 2 Watch List are “on the threshold of CPC status, meaning
that the violations engaged in or tolerated by the government are particularly
severe,” the commission says.
“The Lao legal code restricts religious practice, and the government is either
unable or unwilling to curtail ongoing religious freedom abuses in some
provincial areas,” according to the USCIRF report.
Though religious freedom conditions have improved over the last five years for
majority Buddhist groups and other religious communities in urban areas, “our
concern and our problems lie primarily with provincial officials and the status
of communities in the provinces,” said Swett.
“There we see continued violations of religious freedom for ethnic minority
Protestants, who face detention, surveillance, harassment, property
confiscation, and in some instances forced renunciations of faith.”
This is a situation that has varied by region and by religious group, Swett
said.
“[But] the improvements have not been sufficient in our view to warrant moving
Laos entirely off of that Tier 2 status.”