Following are excerpts from the report of Rev. Le Trung Cang on the condition of the Cao Dai Church in Vietnam after years of enduring attacks from the Vietnamese Communist Party and its government. Cao Dai Church was founded in Vietnam with its Holy Temple and headquarters in Tay Ninh province. Millions of Cao Dai followers are now living in southern and central Vietnam.
This report was presented at the ceremony to commemorate the announcement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, organized by the Free Vietnamese Community in Paris on December 05, 1999.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Human rights violations today are considered serious crimes by humanity. Governments can no longer hide behind the façade of national sovereignty to cover up their domestic human rights violations. Recent events showed that the United Nations are now willing to intervene by force in the name of human rights in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone and so on.
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With such hope for people's rights as human beings and their rights to happiness, I consider it my duty to raise my voice alongside with other Buddhist, Christian, and Hoa Hao Buddhist leaders to reveal to the public inside and outside Vietnam, and to the conscience of the world those human rights violations on the Vietnam soil, particularly the anti-religion policy of the Vietnamese government.
As for the Cao Dai Church, the policy of the Hanoi government is not just to oppress but to exterminate the faith under a methodical plan, which I will describe below.
A. From 1945 to 1975:
As early as 1945 (the year the communists took power in North Vietnam), the Viet Minh Front (led by Vietnamese communists) massacred many Cao Dai followers. Common graves of over 2500 leaders and lay people were found in Quang Ngai province. Our Religious Propagation Office in Central Vietnam documented these atrocities with numerous details, pictures, and lists of names of the victims. Mass killing also took place at Tra Cao village of Tay Ninh province. Viet Minh troops shelled the outer perimeter of the Holy Temple while communist guerillas carried out the killing of villagers. Most of the victims were Cao Dai followers.
B - From 1975 to 1996:
1. On April 30, 1975 (the day the communists took over the entire country), a battalion of communist troops camped on the interior courtyard of the Holy Temple and stayed there for a year, prolonging the state of terror. They arrested, imprisoned, terrorized, searched, threatened people and forced them to political indoctrination and confession of crimes they did not commit. Many Church leaders were sent to reeducation camps. A number of them were tortured to death in prisons; others were brought to public prosecution sessions, interrogated, harassed, terrorized physically and mentally, or placed under house arrest.
Most of the leaders, clergies, and dedicated followers were driven out of the Holy Temple. They now have to practice their religious lives at home.
2. On September 20, 1978, the Fatherland Front of Tay Ninh province announced its "Condemnation of the Reactionaries among the Leadership of the Tay Ninh Cao Dai Religious Sect for Their Anti-Revolutionary Activities", causing an absolute crisis in the area. The government of Tay Ninh condemned the founding elders like Rev. Le Van Trung, Rev. Pham Cong Tac as lackeys of French colonists, Japanese fascists, and American imperialists. The condemnation was then developed into political lessons and forced on all followers in the Tay Ninh Holy Temple area to learn. These followers were later required to issue a joint statement in support of the sentence!
C. On March 01, 1979:
The Tay Ninh provincial government pressured the then Church leaders to sign the Religious Decree number 1/HT/DL, which:
1. Disband the Church hierarchy and its administrative system. Replacing them was the Council of Governors. Obviously, this council was placed under the control of the Fatherland Front of Tay Ninh. It is necessary to emphasize the fact that the Council of Governors is a state-owned product, which has never been mentioned in the Church's Canons.
2. Many religious facilities, at central and local levels, were transferred to the management and usage of the Vietnamese communists. Within the interior courtyard of the Holy Temple, these facilities were turned into movie theaters, dancing schools, opera training schools, Fatherland Front offices, and even coffee shops.
Since the issuance of this Religious Decree, many Church leaders and followers had stood up and fought vigorously against it. Unfortunately, the force of evil still has the upper hand with its mass arrest, severe punishments, long prison sentences, life sentences, and 4 death sentences.
D. From 1995 to 1996:
Many petitions, appeals were sent by followers, especially those living in western provinces, to the Council of Governors to reinstate the Church Canons as written by the founders. Receiving no responses, these followers came to the Tay Ninh province and stage a silent sit-in in the interior courtyard of the Holy Temple. Instead of welcoming their follow believers, the Council of Governors called in Public Securities cadres from Hoa Thanh district to suppress and disperse the crowd, and arrested the leaders. Among them, Rev. Huynh Van Thang was beaten repeatedly until becoming unconscious. The wounds were so severe that the province hospital could not treat him effectively. He was then transported to Nguyen Trai Hospital in Saigon. The victims of this incident later wrote protests to the Ministry of Interior but received no solutions. I myself brought the incident to the attention of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva soon afterward.
E. On May 27, 1996:
The Communist Party chapter of Tay Ninh scheduled Plan 01/KH/TU to carry out the measures called for in the abovementioned 1979 Condemnation. This Plan would:
1. Reaffirm the Tay Ninh Cao Dai Church as just a sect;
2. Forbid the use of the religious artifact Co But;
3. Reduce the Church's 5-level system down to 2;
4. Form the Steering Committee, consisting of members from the Public
Securities, the State Religious Committee, the Mass Mobilization Committee
and the Standing Committee of the provincial Party chapter, to:
a. Select new members for the Council of Governors for the new term;
b. Compile the new By-laws according to the above direction;
c. Organize a Church Conference with selected delegates from all
provinces to approve the new By-laws.
F. In 1997:
The new By-laws were declared by the Council of Governors under the direction of the Steering Committee of Tay Ninh Party chapter and according to Plan 01/KH/TU of May 27, 1996. They then recognized the legal status of the Council of Governors and gave it more authorities.
One of such authorities is the Council's power to bestow religious ranks after being checked and approved by the government. This is important because all the new religious leaders were ordained by secular people. This is totally opposite to the Church Canons which only recognize ordainments by the Church's highest clergies.
G. On November 23-25, 1999:
The communist government ordained 1,648 leaders, including (a) 306 from Giao Huu to Giao Su, Dao Nhon and Thua Su; and (b) 1,342 Dao Huu to Le Sanh level. This wholesale ordainment was one step in the overall plan to exterminate the Cao Dai Church. The ordainment was unprecedented in the history of the Church. Such action by the Vietnamese communists has:
1. blatantly interfered with the internal operation of the Cao Dai Church,
and violated the Religious Freedom stipulated in their own Constitution;
2. flooded the Church with their delegates to decide all matters of the
Church according to their plan;
3. effectively, terminated the Church completely;
4. controlled and directed the entire Cao Dai Church with the elimination of
the orthodox teachings and the administrative system, and the replacement of
the heavenly-ordained clergies with secularly-ordained ones;
5. effectively, created a new religion totally different from the Cao Dai
Church.
H. According to our source in Vietnam, after ordaining that many leaders, the government is about to implement the forced unification scheme with two measures:
1. Bestowing the Head of the Tien Thien branch as the top leader of the Cao Dai Church. Tien Thien is a branch of Cao Dai and has traditionally been close to the Vietnamese communists: (a) in 1962, this branch formed the Cao Dai Confederation to support the NLF (Hanoi's front organization to invade South Vietnam); (b) representatives of this branch have been assigned to the communist National Assembly; (c) members of this branch serve as high-ranking cadres of the Fatherland Front; (d) their cooperation with the communist government was publicly commended by Hanoi on February 06, 1995; (e) many leaders of this branch are high-ranking and senior members of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Some of them are leading Fatherland Front chapters in western provinces. And one member of the Tien Thien branch, Trinh Van Lau, once served as the Mayor of Tay Ninh province.
2. Moving the remains of Cao Trieu Phat, the former Head of the Minh Chon Dao branch, to a burial site inside the Tay Ninh Holy Temple. In 1939, Mr. Phat joined the People Liberation Committee of Bac Lieu province. In October, 1946, he became a member of the Viet Minh National Assembly. In 1947, he formed the National Salvation Cao Dai to unify the 12 branches and establish the Holy Temple in Dong Thap, within the Viet Minh controlled territory. For those contributions, the communist government rewarded him with a Second Resistance Medal. After the Geneva Agreement was signed in 1954, he chose to regroup in North Vietnam and passed away a year later in Hanoi.
Once the government have accomplished item G and H, the Tay Ninh-Holy Temple Cao Dai Church would cease to exist. In its place, the communist government is establishing a new Cao Dai with Marxism-Leninism as its underlining doctrine and all leaders under the total control of the communist authorities.
Rev. Le Trung Cang