WASHINGTON- Commission Leonard Leo of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom joined Representatives
Chris Smith (R-NJ), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Ed Royce (R-CA), Dan
Lungren (R-CA), and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) in a press conference sponsored by
the bipartisan House Vietnam Caucus regarding the demonstrated complicity of Vietnam in
various human rights violations, particularly against its minority communities.
In advance of the expected visit
of Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to the United States, the bipartisan House Vietnam Caucus,
along with several Vietnamese community leaders, held press conference highlighting the horrific human rights abuses and the urgent "need to reform" in Vietnam. The Members called upon President Bush to make human rights a
focal point of his agenda in his upcoming meetings with the Vietnamese Prime
Minister.
The press conference took place on the Terrace of the Cannon
House Office Building on Thursday, June 19th at 10:30 a.m.
June 19, 2008
I want to thank the
Vietnam Human Rights Caucus for organizing this press conference and inviting the
Commission on International Religious Freedom to address it. It is well-timed, just a few days ahead of the
visit of the Vietnamese Prime Minister to Washington,
and sends an important signal to the Vietnamese government that human rights
abuses in Vietnam are of deep concern to both the U.S. government
and the citizens of the United States.
A
Commission delegation spent two weeks in Vietnam last October. We met government officials, religious
leaders, civil society representatives, and several prisoners including
Buddhist monk Thich Quang Do, Catholic priest Phan Van Loi, Nguyen Van Dai, and
LeThi Cong Nhan.
Although
religious freedom conditions have improved since the State Department first
designated Vietnam a "Country of Particular Concern" or CPC in 2004, the
progress has occurred alongside persistent abuses, discrimination, and
restrictions. The government continues
to imprison and detain dozens of individuals motivated by their religion or
conscience to advocate for religious freedom reforms in Vietnam.
After returning from
Vietnam, the Commission concluded that religious freedom conditions remain
problematic: improvements for some
religious communities do not extend fully to others; progress in one province
is not realized in another; national laws are not fully implemented at the
local and provincial levels and are sometimes used to restrict rather than
protect religious freedom; and there continue to be far too many abuses and
restrictions affecting Vietnam's diverse religious communities, including the
imprisonment and detention of individuals for reasons related to their
religious activity or religious freedom advocacy.
The
government continues to imprison and detain dozens of individuals motivated by
their religion or conscience to advocate for religious freedom reforms in
Vietnam.
There
continue to be isolated but credible reports of forced renunciations of faith,
including the beating death of an ethnic minority Protestant in 2007.
Independent
religious activity is illegal. Those who
seek to practice outside of government-approved religious organizations-such as
the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam, the Hoa Hao Cao Dai and some
Protestants, face harassment, detention, and arrest.
Growing
religious practice among ethnic minority Buddhists and Protestants is often
viewed as a security threat, requiring officials, in the words of a government-issued
training manual, to manage, control and "resolutely overcome" religious growth
among ethnic minorities.
Religious freedom
abuses and restrictions are not simply a concern of the past. We have continued to receive reports of
serious abuses, including:
- the
disappearance of a Khmer Buddhist monk who refused to defrock novice monks
participating in February 2007 demonstrations against religious freedom
restrictions;
- the
detention of some monks and vandalism of pagodas associated with the UBCV; and
- local
government officials confiscating the property and destroying the homes of
ethnic minority Protestants in the northwest provinces, reportedly in an effort
to persuade them to renounce their faith and return to traditional religious
practices.
In view of the ongoing and serious problems
faced by many of Vietnam's religious communities, the uneven pace of reforms
meant to improve the situation, the continued detention of religious prisoners
of concern, and what can only be seen as a deteriorating human rights situation
overall, the Commission again last month in the release of our Annual Report
recommended that Vietnam be re-designated as a CPC under the International
Religious Freedom Act of 1998.
Vietnam was removed
from the State Department's CPC list in November 2006, on the eve of President
Bush's visit to Hanoi for the Asian Pacific Economic Conference. At that time, the Commission expressed its
concern over the decision to lift the CPC designation.
The Commission's
view differs from that of the State Department: we continue to find that
lifting Vietnam's CPC designation in 2006 was premature, removing an effective
diplomatic tool. The absence of that
tool was all the more evident when Vietnam launched a crackdown on human
rights, democracy, free speech, labor, and religious freedom advocates shortly
after the State Department made the decision to lift the CPC designation.
One
of the factors the Commission used in making our CPC recommendation is that
there continue to be religious "prisoners of concern" in Vietnam.
In
March 2008 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Assistant
Secretary Christopher Hill stated that Vietnam "no longer qualifies as a severe
violator of religious freedom" because "all individuals the United States had
identified as prisoners of concern for reasons connected to their faith" have
been released.
Yet
it is the Commission's contention that there are scores of religious prisoners
of concern in Vietnam, detained and imprisoned, in part, for their attempt to
exercise their religious freedom or to advocate on behalf of it.
In
addition there are hundreds of Montagnard Protestants who were imprisoned after
2001 and 2004 demonstrations for land rights and religious freedom. Religious leaders were arrested because they
refused to inform on congregants who participated in the demonstrations,
because they were suspected of making contacts with groups abroad, or for
sheltering individuals seeking asylum in Cambodia
Though the
U.S.-Vietnamese relationship continues to grow, it is too soon to determine
whether the Vietnamese government is fully committed to respecting religious
freedom instead of maintaining control of its diverse religious communities.