"Top Secret" documents offer a rare glimpse of official views on the need to control the spread of religion
By Murray Hiebert/WASHINGTON
Issue cover-dated November 16, 2000
VIETNAM'S COMMUNIST RULERS rarely tire of claiming that they champion religious freedom and that any repression of religious believers is the result of isolated excesses by overzealous local officials. But a trove of recent Communist Party documents leaked to human-rights activists demonstrates that officials are alarmed by the growing number of ethnic minority people converting to Christianity and that iron-fisted efforts to stop this trend often represent official policy.
Hanoi's treatment of religious believers will be a key talking point on Bill Clinton's agenda when on November 16 he becomes the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam. Clinton plans to signal his concerns about religious freedom by requesting to meet Catholic Archbishop Pham Minh Man at the Notre Dame cathedral in Ho Chi Minh City.
A week before Clinton was due to embark on his trip, Washington-based Freedom House, a well-established pro-democracy, human-rights group, was due to release eight documents by Vietnamese government and party officials that justify a pattern of repression and attempted control over religion, particularly Protestant Christianity. These 50 pages, stamped "top secret" or "secret," which were seen by the REVIEW, offer a rare glimpse into the attitudes, policies and plans of the party and government regarding religion. The outlook presented fits the pattern of how Hanoi has approached religion in the past. However, due to the sensitivity of the documents, which were leaked by Vietnamese officials, their authenticity couldn't be confirmed with Hanoi.
Some of the documents originated in Hanoi and apply nationwide; others were produced by local party officials in the northwestern province of Lao Cai. Hanoi generally issues a policy framework to guide individual provinces on how to deal with problems on their own. In this case, the views from the province and the capital are complementary. "These documents provide irrefutable evidence that repression drives day-to-day policy and practices," says Freedom House.
One of the documents--produced by the Bureau of Minority and Religious Affairs in Lao Cai in December 1998--is a detailed Marxist analysis charging that Vietnamese Christians have colluded with Vietnam's enemies since prior to the country's colonization by France in the mid-19th century. "The imperialist enemies and their gangs consider using the exploitation of religion as a very important factor in resisting the revolutionary movement," the authors say.
The Lao Cai officials save their harshest attacks for the Vatican and the U.S. government. The Holy See in Rome is charged with trying to show Vietnamese Catholics how religious groups helped topple the communist regimes in Europe. "The Vatican directed many overseas religious organizations to provide financial aid and reactionary documents in which the experience of opposing communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was shared with the Vietnamese church," the document charges. The Vatican allegedly uses radio stations to "broadcast information into our country, hopingÉto separate the people from the party."
The writers claim that Washington is trying to foment rebellion in the highlands populated by ethnic minorities. "The U.S. imperialists still manoeuvre various foreign Protestant denominationsÉto provide financial aid for their related churches to multiply believers and expand their area of influence," the document says. The Americans "hope that some day there will be a conflict between the local government authorities and the new followers of the evangelical faith."
The Lao Cai document reports that the number of Protestant Christians in the province had grown from zero in 1991 to 50,000 seven years later. Other documents due to be released by Freedom House put the number at 70,000, but Vietnamese Christians estimate the figure at 150,000-300,000. A document drafted in May 1999 by a Hanoi group called Steering Committee 184 attributes these conversions to short-wave religious radio broadcasts out of the Philippines and hardship in remote areas of Vietnam. "We have no methods suited to consolidate our infrastructure in remote, hard-to-live areas, and so we leave room for bad elements to come and propagandize, mobilize and develop religion," the 12-page analysis says.
A second document produced by Steering Committee 184 in March 1999 admits that government persecution of Christians often has been counterproductive. "Using methods of fighting the contagion of Christianity in minority areas (such as using force to make people renounce their religion, fining people, arresting and confining missionaries to prevent their activities) has the opposite effect of making people even more curious," the authors report. "Actually the numbers are growing slowly if we have a relaxed policy and, if we crack down hard, Christianity grows faster."
Nevertheless, this document and others continue to call on officials to "stop cold the contagious spread of religion." A "secret" study prepared in January 1999 by the Lao Cai People's Committee calls on officials to inform their citizens that it is "forbiddenÉto listen to the radio station of the enemy," "use illegally smuggled religious materials," "gather many people to study religion" and "collect money or rice to establish an illegal fund." Interestingly, the authors admit that ethnic minority Christians are bold enough to "write petitions to all levels of government, demanding freedom of religion."
When the communists won the war in 1975, they arrested many religious leaders and held them for years in re-education camps, confiscated property of religious groups, closed seminaries and sharply restricted the naming of new leaders. Despite the continuing harassment of Christians in remote areas today, most human-rights activists are convinced that the treatment of Vietnam's religious believers has improved since the party launched its policy of reforms in the late 1980s.
Human Rights Watch of New York said in a recent report that eight ethnic Hmong and Hre Christian leaders remained in police custody in October, although two dozen others were released from detention at the end of 1999. At least three Catholic priests remain in prison, while the government continues to restrict the number of parishes that are allowed to operate and closely screens candidates for the priesthood.
Christians aren't the only ones facing difficulties. Early this year, a conflict erupted in Hanoi over whether government officials had the right to appoint abbots to the One-Pillar Pagoda, an ancient Hanoi landmark. And the government has frequently clashed with independent-minded leaders of the United Buddhist Church, most recently in early October, when monks sought to conduct an independent relief operation to flood victims in the Mekong delta.
Future conflicts between the government and the Vietnam's religious communities are almost inevitable. The December 1999 document from Lao Cai calls on officials to "work hard to control religious leaders, officials and missionaries in order to compete with them." It concludes by arguing that "we must turn propaganda into an art form" so that "they will not know they are being propagandized."