Vietnam tightens control on religion
SYDNEY - Activists and Western governments are turning up the heat on Vietnamese authorities ahead of the trial of a dissident monk whose apparent abduction while traveling abroad has tested the limits of Hanoi's self-proclaimed religious tolerance.
Buddhist groups claim that Thich Tri Luc was kidnapped by secret police in Cambodia in July and bundled back across the border to silence his outspoken human-rights views, even though he had refugee status.
Thich Tri Luc's trial was originally scheduled for August 1, but the hearing was postponed after a clamor of protest from the European Commission, human-rights activists and the United Nations, which earlier brought the monk under its official protection. The trial is now expected to commence by the end of October, and will probably be conducted under internal-security laws in a closed court. Thich Tri Luc faces a jail term ranging from three years to life if he is convicted.
In an effort to strengthen religious tolerance, prominent Buddhist leader Thich Quang Do stepped up pressure on political authorities this week by appealing directly to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to stop harassing the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), which has been banned since 1981. In a rare display of criticism against the ruling Communist Party, Thich Quang Do, 75, implied that Phan Van Khai had reneged on pledges made earlier in the year for a more liberal attitude toward religion.
"Your frank declarations gave Buddhists the hope that we might at last begin to heal the wounds inflicted upon our community throughout years of unceasing repression, not only since reunification [in 1975], but also when our country was partitioned" into North and South Vietnam, he said. Instead, believers had been subjected to "grave violations of human rights and democratic freedoms ... [including] interrogations, harassment and intimidation".
Thich Quang Do and Thich Tri Luc - whose secular name is Pham Van Tuong - are the public faces of a movement that has created a dilemma for Hanoi as it strives to present a more humane image abroad while maintaining the political status quo at home.
Vietnam's 30 million Buddhists and 7 million Christians do not threaten the party's grasp on power; they are splintered, have limited access to finances and are not usually viewed as militant. Hanoi contends that 22,000 temples, churches and other religious venues have been allowed to operate openly throughout the country with a minimum of supervision, attracting crowds as large as 200,000 for festivals. Two years ago the communist state actually lifted a ban on the activities of Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV), a Protestant grouping.
The sting is that this massive community has been used, according to the Government Religious Board, to galvanize support for human-rights positions and even lobby for increased democratization. As a result, hundreds of monks and priests have been detained during the past decade under Article 91 of the Criminal Code for allegedly trying to "contact outside organizations in order to undermine the Vietnamese government".
Thich Tri Luc was first placed under "pagoda arrest" during a government crackdown in 1992 after the UBCV protested against the treatment of Buddhists and called on the state to respect religious freedom, according to Amnesty International (AI).
He was detained again in November 1994 for assisting a flood relief effort in the Mekong Delta that used sandbags printed with the UBCV logo, serving 30 months in prison and a subsequent five years under house arrest.
Required to report monthly to the security police, restricted from traveling, forced out of the pagoda where he lived and deprived of a range of other personal rights, Thich Tri Luc fled to Cambodia in April of this year seeking political asylum.
Police said he was stopped at the border while trying to "undermine the government"; but the UBCV claims he was taken from a guesthouse in Phnom Penh and forced to return to Hanoi, despite being under the care of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"It became clear to me that there was no way for me to continue living in Vietnam. My rights and daily way of living were being trampled by the authorities. Please help a member of the Buddhist church who has just escaped from Vietnam's harsh yoke," Thich Tri Luc wrote in a letter to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) when he was in Phnom Penh.
Prior to Thich Tri Luc's arrest, Thich Quang Do, the deputy leader of the UBCV and Vietnam's most famous dissident, was placed under "probationary detention" in June 2001 for launching an "Appeal for Democracy in Vietnam", but restrictions were lifted in June. In April he helped arrange the landmark meeting between Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and Venerable Thich Huyen Quang, 86, the patriarch of the UBCV, who has been held under house arrest without trial for more than 20 years.
According to the UBCV's version of the meeting, which is accepted by Western diplomats, Phan Van Khai acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the handling of the religious issue and gave an undertaking to ease state controls.
"There were some subtle improvements in treatment of religious dissidents after the Khai meeting, though I would have to say that the Pham Van Tuong [Tri Luc] incident could not have come at a more unfortunate time," said a European diplomat. "I think the message from the Khai session was that Vietnam regards the religious issue as an annoying distraction and is happy to leave the monks to their own devices as long as they keep their noses clean of politics."
But the US State Department noted in its latest International Religious Freedom Report that most restrictions were being retained, because "the Communist Party fears that not only organized religion but any organized group outside its control or supervision may weaken its authority and influence".
The report said the authorities mistrusted small non-conformist religious sects, especially those involving ethnic minorities such as the highland Montagnard Protestants, because they had evolved into social lobbying groups.
"Many of these Protestant ethnic minorities ... were not protesting for religious reasons, but rather were protesting against the loss of traditional homelands to recent migrants, mostly ethnic Vietnamese, and abusive police treatment in the provinces," the department noted.
Washington has officially protested at Hanoi's refusal to recognize the refugee status of Thich Tri Luc, while liberal members of the European Commission are pressing for a halt in the EC's aid to Vietnam until he is released.
But some Vietnamese observers believe that Phan Van Khai's more liberal stance is not supported by the hardline security branch, which has sought to remove potential risks by herding Buddhists into one tightly regulated congregation. In mid-September, police brutally broke up a UBCV rally in Binh Dinh province, where patriarch Thich Huyen Quang is under detention, apparently with the aim of preventing contact with the supreme leader.
While some prominent dissidents have been released from house arrest or given more lenient terms, there has been no evident change in the number of Vietnamese being held for alleged violations of religious decrees - believed to be between 40 and 50.
"I don't think we are going to see any real loosening up as long as religion is treated as a political rather than a human-rights issue," said another diplomat.
"[But] a tough sentence for Tri Luc could send the wrong message, for they have to be careful that the Tri Luc affair doesn't blow up in their faces by providing a martyr to the cause."
By Alan Boyd - Asia Times - October 04, 2003.
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