and
Religious Freedom
by Michael Benge –
For years, the American
Embassy, the State Department, and the Senate have enabled communist
On April 11, the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Congressman Chris Smith, highlighted a
litany of abuses by the communist Vietnamese. Congressman Smith explained that
the House of Representatives had twice passed the Human Rights Act
on Vietnam, only to have it rejected by the Senate. He noted the repeated
recommendations by both the House and the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom to have the Department of State designate
John Sifton, from Human Rights Watch -- Asia, reported that
"Police brutality, including torture in detention and fatal beatings,
continued to be reported in all regions of the country." His testimony
covered a plethora of human rights abuses, starting with fact that "a
growing number of dissidents -- including religious leaders, bloggers, and
politically active people -- are being convicted and sent to jail for
violations of Vietnam's authoritarian penal code, which prohibits public
criticism of the government and the communist party. Others are jailed for
exposing corruption."
Former Congressman Anh
"Joseph" Cao said, "Since 2007,
Religious abuses
On March 17, Vam
Ngaij Vaj, a Hmong elder and leader of a protestant church in Cu Jut
District, Dak Nong Province, was savagely tortured and then beaten to death by
police officials. This is not an isolated incident, but commonplace. Vaj's
battered body showed extensive marks from electric shocks with cattle prods,
which are often used to torture prisoners. His torture and murder is an example
of how police officials intimidate and terrorize Christian ethnic minorities in
the Central and
Anna Buonya, representing
the Montagnard Human Rights Organization, testified about the persecution of a
broad spectrum of ethnic minorities, adding that entire Hmong villages have
been destroyed by Vietnamese authorities because they practiced Christianity.
In the past few years, over 4000 Montagnard house churches have been destroyed.
There are currently over 400 Montagnard Christians, many of them preachers, who
have been imprisoned for their religious and political beliefs; some for as
long as 16 years. She stated that it is common practice by the Vietnamese
authorities to deny prisoners clean water, sufficient food, and family visits.
Robbing the faithful
Ms. Buonya also spoke of
another form of persecution. Most ethnic minorities in the central highlands
live on a small plot of marginal land covered with scrub brush, on which they
are barely able to grow subsistence crops to feed their families. Often, after
they have carved out fields, built homes, improved the land, and planted, their
land is taken by the government when the crops are ready to harvest --
confiscated with no compensation or recourse. The family is arrested on the
spurious charge of "destroying forest" and the newly-developed land
is sold to ethnic Vietnamese settlers or to large agricultural companies to
plant cash crops such as rubber. The money from the stolen land goes to line
the pockets of local officials.
Also testifying before the
committee was Tien Thanh Tran, a member of the Con Dau Catholic Parish in the
Diocese of Da Nang, which has 135 years of history. On
The purpose of these brutal
acts is to force the parishioners to leave so local officials can expropriate
the land from the church and its members and sell it at a huge profit for self
enrichment; while simultaneously wiping out this historical Catholic parish. On
Behind
Vo Van Ai, International
Spokesman of the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), testified that the
UBCV is "Vietnam's largest religious organization and has a history of
peaceful social activism and moral reform," yet UBCV's 85-year-old
Patriarch Thich Quang Do remains under house arrest, and the UBCV is outlawed
by the communist government. He said, "Whilst appreciating the State
Department's reports of abuses against the UBCV, we are concerned that they
portray but a pale picture of the systematic police pressures, harassment and
intimidation faced by UBCV Buddhists in every aspect of their daily
lives." The UBCV "has faced decades of harassment and repression for
seeking independent status and for appealing to the government to respect
religious freedom and related human rights." Vo Van Ai called upon the
State Department to "look behind
The U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom reports that the UBCV has suffered marked increases in
beatings, arrests, detention (up to 15 years), and harassment of groups and
individuals viewed as hostile to the communist party. The UBCV is prevented
from carrying out educational and charitable activities and from celebrating
religious occasions, such as Buddha's birthday, and dignitaries are prevented
from traveling and meeting together. Believers are under threat of losing their
jobs and having their children expelled from school.
Nowhere to run
Ms. Buonya and others
testified that there is no safe haven for asylum-seekers fleeing human rights
abuses. She told of two Montagnards who have suffered severe persecution and
physical beatings by the Vietnamese police and have been in hiding for several
years. Miraculously, they were finally able to obtain an interview with the
U.S. consulate while yet in hiding, only to be told by the International
Organization for Migration that unless they obtained a passport from the
Vietnamese government, their application would be denied.
Even if they are able to
escape to
And the band plays on
Communist Vietnam has
violated every agreement it has made with the
Before
Michael Benge spent 11
years in