Vietnam:
Christmas marked with violent crackdowns
VietCatholic News (28 Dec 2010 15:38)
Beatings, Church raids, arrests, forbidding Christmas Mass, bulldozing
monasteries – are some of the violent incidents inflicted on Christians by
authorities in Vietnam.
An estimate of 2000 Protestants were locked out of a Christmas celebration
scheduled to take place at the National Convention Center in the Tu Liem
district of Hanoi on Sunday December 19. The organizers had rented the
auditorium but at the last minute the managers of the state-owned facility
unitarily terminated the contract. Deeply disappointed to see the door locked
and hundreds of uniformed police chasing them away, the Christians began singing
and praying in the square in front of the building. Police called for
reinforcements and started punching some Christians, striking some with
nightsticks. Eventually police reinforcements wielding cattle prods dispersed
the crowd away from the site, but not before at least six people including Rev.
Nguyen Huu Bao, the scheduled speaker at the event, had been arrested.
Similar blockades stopped church services simultaneously in Thanh Hoa, Nghe An,
and Da Nang.
Earlier, on two consecutive days, December 8 and 9, local officials interrupted
scheduled liturgical celebrations and ongoing Christmas preparations at the
Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Saigon, belonging to the Redemptorist
order. Father Vincent Pham Trung Thanh, the provincial superior, was taken in
for questioning.
Two weeks later, Redemptorists in Vietnam faced another trouble. In an urgent
protest letter published on Dec. 20, Father Joseph Dinh Huu Thoai, chief of the
secretariat of the local Redemptorist province, protested that the Redemptorist
monastery in Dalat city had been seized by the local government of Lam Dong to
be converted into a regional biological research institute. In a similar
incident, Sister Philippe Dinh Thi Nhung, the provincial superior of the Sisters
of Providence of Portieux, accused the local government of Soc Trang Province of
bulldozing the order’s monastery in Soc Trang City.
On Christmas Day, local officials at Son Lang village, backed by police and
militia, banned Bishop Michael Hoang Duc Oanh of Kontum from celebrating Mass.
“If you want to celebrate your Mass you can do so, but not for everyone here.
You have to go to each family and each Mass cannot last for more than one hour,”
he was told. The prelate gave his blessings to the congregation and cancelled
the Mass as a gesture of protest.
The escalation of violence crackdowns of the government, happening
simultaneously on a large scale, sparks a growing concern among Catholics over a
new policy of repression against Christians. The fear has been reinforced by
bustling activities of ‘patriotic’ Catholics.