Federal body says U.S. should oppose international loans to the nation.
April 7, 2001
By JOHN GITTELSOHN, The Orange County Register
The U.S. government should oppose international loans to Vietnam and denounce the communist government's oppression of religious freedom, a federal panel recommended Friday.
The Commission on International Religious Freedom urged Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to oppose $800 million in new loans to Vietnam that are pending before the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Commission Chairman Elliott Abrams cited surveillance, imprisonment and other restrictions imposed on Catholics, Buddhists and other religious followers.
"The Commission believes that the severity of the Vietnamese government's violation of religious freedom, and its apparent unwillingness to make sustained improvements in the protection of religious freedom, warrants the use of this sanction," Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state, wrote in a letter released Friday.
In a separate letter, Abrams urged Secretary of State Colin Powell to denounce Vietnam's religious record before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which is holding its annual session in Geneva.
O'Neill and Powell have not responded to the letters. Vietnamese religious leaders in Orange County urged Washington to follow the commission's recommendations.
"The evidence is that human-rights improvements are more likely to come from strength and hard bargaining on the part of the United States, not from a policy of concessions," said Huynh Mai Nguyen, a spokeswoman for Hoa Hao Buddhist Church in Santa Ana who had testified at the commission's February hearings. The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington responded by citing previous statements asserting that Vietnam recognizes religious freedom and only prosecutes individuals who violate laws that protect public security or order.
On Friday, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh accused religious dissidents, including Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly, of trying to undermine the government.
"All plots to agitate and divide the bloc of national great unity must be uncovered and condemned," she said of Ly, who was detained after submitting written testimony to the federal commission that criticized Vietnam over religious repression. Meanwhile, Vietnamese dissidents in exile accused Hanoi on Friday of brutally repressing Christians and Buddhists.
The U.S.-based Montagnard Foundation, which represents the ethnic people who fought alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, urged the international community to reconsider trading with or giving aid to the communist government.
"In the last eight weeks, hundreds of our people have been attacked, arrested, beaten and tortured with electric prods by Vietnamese authorities," Kok Ksor, executive director of the Montagnard Foundation, said outside the U.N. meeting in Geneva.
"Some of our people have died from torture already." The commission, established by Congress in 1998 to advise the government on international religious and human- rights questions, will issue a recommendation by May 1 on the U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement, which faces congressional ratification this year, said spokesman Lawrence Goodrich.
The commission letters criticized Vietnam for restrictions on religious gatherings and cited reports of people being "detained, fined, imprisoned, and kept under close surveillance by security forces for engaging in 'illegal' religious activities." Reuters contributed to this report.