Vietnam under new fire over rights record
Vietnam has resorted to church-burnings, torture and arbitrary arrest in a
year-old campaign of repression against the hill tribes of the central
highlands, Human Rights Watch said in the most detailed report into the
unrest to date.
Protestant Christians have been systematically targetted for persecution in
the clampdown, which was still continuing last month, the New York-based
watchdog said on Tuesday, fuelling mounting criticism of the communist
regime's rights record.
Believers have been pressured into renouncing their faith, while church
leaders have been subjected to punitive land confiscations and other
harassment, HRW said in the report based on Vietnamese officials documents
and the testimony of well over a hundred eyewitnesses.
In some areas the authorities have held mock pagan ceremonies at which
goat's blood was drunk. In others Protestants have been required to recant
in signed affidavits, the watchdog said in the 200-page report, citing
original police documents.
HRW called on Hanoi to end the repression which had driven hundreds of
highlanders to seek refuge in neighbouring Cambodia since a series of
peaceful demonstrations for land rights, religious freedoms and independence
from Hanoi early last year.
It also urged Phnom Penh to reopen its borders to the refugees, reversing a
decision last month to turn away all further Vietnamese asylum-seekers.
"Cambodia is violating its international obligations to provide temporary
asylum," said HRW's Washington director for Asia, Mike Jendrzejczyk.
"But the turmoil in the highlands, and the refugee flow to Cambodia, is
likely to continue until Hanoi takes effective action to end the
mistreatment of Montagnards."
HRW found no evidence to back Vietnamese claims that significant violence
had been used during the 2001 demonstrations.
State television had shown glimpses of protestors using sling shots in one
demonstration, but the fact that it showed no more compelling images of
violence in a report broadcast a full month after the event suggested there
were none.
"While the Vietnamese authorities in some instances may have been justified
in using force during the 2001 demonstrations, the force employed seems to
have been disproportionate.
"In the days and weeks following the demonstrations moreover, the
authorities committed violations of fundamental human rights, including
torture, destruction of church buildings and intimidation and harassment of
evangelical Protestant congregations."
The scale of the repression had been utterly counterproductive, prompting
even highlanders who had played no part in the 2001 protests to join the
refugee exodus, the watchdog said.
One refugee who voluntarily returned to his home village in the highlands in
February this year told how fellow villagers had pressed him to go straight
back to Cambodia because of the continuing crackdown on Protestants.
"Now the authorities ... forbid anything to do with Christianity," a church
leader said in a note smuggled out of the region, which has remained largely
closed to outsiders since the protests.
Underground Protestant churches, which have won over as many as 40 percent
of the one million indigenous highlanders, "provide a space for Montagnard
expression not controlled by the authorities," HRW said.
"In part because of this very reason. the government has become increasingly
suspicious of Protestants in this region, fuelling a vicious cycle.
"At the end of 2001, groups of highlanders arrived in Cambodia with reports
that repression of Christians had worsened further.
"Additional arrests of church leaders were reported in Gia Lai and Dak Lak
in January and February 2002, prompting more villagers to flee."
Protestants had also been a particular target for the arbitrary land
confiscations which had affected many highlanders in the face of a massive
influx of ethnic Vietnamese settlers, who now formed 75 percent of the
region's population.
Agence France Presse - April 23, 2002
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