San Jose Mercury News
Wednesday, September 6, 2000
BY MARK MCDONALD
Mercury News Vietnam Bureau
HANOI -- They show up twice a week, Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, 15 or 20 of them quietly arriving in twos and threes, all of them crowding into Mai's apartment in a shabby housing block in Hanoi.
Mai tells the neighborhood snoops that the people stop by to learn English, but they actually come to pray together, study gospel lessons and share their photocopied Bibles.
This is a house church in Vietnam -- small, secret and dangerous.
House churches have proliferated throughout Vietnam in recent years, although the security police restrict such gatherings and there are any number of vague laws and decrees that prohibit them.
This sort of governmental suppression and control of religion came under sharp criticism from the United States on Tuesday as the State Department released its annual Report on International Religious Freedom.
Vietnam was among several ``totalitarian or authoritarian regimes'' specifically rebuked for their religious restrictions. Other countries cited were Afghanistan, Burma, China, Cuba, Laos and North Korea.
The report (www.state.gov) found that Hanoi ``continued to restrict significantly'' various religious groups, using such measures as ``police questioning and arbitrary detention of persons based on religious beliefs and practices.''
Mai, 34, who asks that her real name not be used, says the professors, shopkeepers and civil servants in her little Protestant congregation are endangering their jobs and families merely by attending the house church.
`Black mark'
``They might not arrest us, but it would be a black mark against all of us if the police found out,'' she says. ``We don't like the regular church because it's run by the government, and some of us think the pastor is a government informant. Also, the undercover police are always there to see who comes to worship.''
In its report, the State Department found some gradual improvements in religious freedom, acknowledging the release of more than a dozen ethnic Hmong Protestants and three Catholic priests, and the growth in worship activities. The report also noted that ``there was continued gradual expansion of the parameters for individual believers of officially recognized churches'' in some parts of the country.
But the State Department also identified at least 16 religious prisoners, saying that number is ``probably higher.''
``The government generally allowed persons to practice individual worship in the religion of their choice, and participation in religious activities throughout the country continued to grow significantly,'' the report said. ``However, government restrictions on the hierarchies and clergy of most religious groups remained in place, and religious groups faced difficulties in training and ordaining clergy, publishing religious materials and conducting educational and humanitarian activities.''
Hanoi consistently and vehemently denies that it holds any religious or political prisoners, saying all detainees are criminals.
The Vietnamese constitution guarantees the freedom of religion, but the state requires all religions to be part of the government's Fatherland Front, which regulates the country's mass social organizations.
Laws and governmental decrees on religion can be ominous in their vagueness. A 1999 decree, for example, bans any ``superstitious activities'' by religious groups. Another regulation outlaws religious organizations that might not coincide with ``structures authorized by the prime minister.''
Vietnam officially recognizes six religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and the two indigenous religions of Hoa Hao Buddhism and Cao Daism. Hanoi permits only the state-sponsored versions of these religions to operate.
Laws and decrees
Authorities must approve, for example, the appointments of all new religious leaders, including Buddhist monks and Catholic bishops; the construction and renovation of all churches, temples and pagodas; the publishing and importation of all religious materials; and the training of novice and apprentice church leaders.
Ancestor worship remains the most predominant spiritual practice in Vietnam, regardless of one's official religious affiliation. It's estimated that more than half of Vietnam's population of 77 million is nominally Buddhist.
There are said to be 6 million Roman Catholics, making Vietnam the largest Catholic country in Asia after the Philippines. Protestantism claims about 750,000 adherents, Hoa Hao Buddhism about 1.5 million and the Cao Dai religion about 2.5 million. There are about 75,000 Vietnamese Muslims.
Cao Daism, founded in 1926 in Tay Ninh province, is an eclectic mix of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. It features reincarnation, vegetarianism, garishly decorated temples and spirit-world seances. The late French author Victor Hugo is a leading Cao Dai spirit.
Internationally, Vietnamese control of religion has not been well-regarded in recent years, and the new State Department report is merely the latest indictment.
In a report to the United Nations last spring, Abdelfattah Amor, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, said he was prevented from meeting with various leaders of unofficial religions when he visited the country.
Hanoi officials responded quickly and angrily, saying Amor's report was ``lacking in objectivity and good will.'' The government subsequently announced that it would no longer accept visits from foreign groups or individuals ``wishing to carry out investigations into religious or human rights issues.''
Religious repression in China also increased during the past year, said the report, which also found that violations of religious freedom are a global phenomenon, particularly in communist and Muslim countries. Meanwhile, the Arab population in Israel was subjected to ``various forms of discrimination.''
While finding that government supervision of religious activity in China was minimal in some regions, the study said Chinese officials in other regions ``imposed tight regulations, closed houses of worship and actively persecuted members of some unregistered religious groups.''
Persecuted groups in China were subjected to ``harassment, extortion, prolonged detention, physical abuse and incarceration in prison or in `re-education through labor' camps,'' the report said. ``There were credible reports of religious detainees being beaten and tortured.''
Status of freedom
In 1998, Congress asked the State Department to submit annual reports on the state of international religious freedom. This is the second such report and covers the period July 1, 1999, to June 30, 2000.
The report accuses Iraq of having conducted a ``brutal campaign of murder, summary execution and protracted arbitrary detention against religious leaders and adherents of the majority Shiite population.''
In Afghanistan, the report said the Taliban government, which rules most of the country, has engaged in persecution and killing, particularly against the Shiite minority.
The study concluded that ``significant improvements'' have occurred in Azerbaijan and Laos.
In Laos, the government released in mid-June a large number of Christians who had been imprisoned because of their faith.