Vin Y Het, a young Hroi ethnic minority man who refused to recant his Christian faith, died from injuries received while under official interrogation by Vietnamese police, Compass Direct News reported in June.
The death of Het took place when Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet met with U.S. officials. Triet met with President Bush in Washington, D.C., on June 22 amid protests over Vietnam’s human rights violations.
From Son Hoa district in the costal province of Phu Yen in south-central Vietnam, Het died from internal injuries suffered when officials beat him several months earlier for refusing to deny his Christian faith, Compass reported.
This incident – and others – stoked the heated, on-going debate regarding the intensity of persecution – better or worse – in Vietnam after the United States State Department took Vietnam off the “Countries of Particular Concern (CPC)” list last fall. The list includes counties like North Korea, China and Saudi Arabia which have the poorest religious freedom records. Vietnam was added to the list in 2004 for its repression of religious groups, mainly Protestants.
This May the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Vietnam be place back on the 2007 CPC list, which will be released this fall.
In its recommendation, the Commission stated: “Since the CPC designation was lifted and Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), positive religious freedom trends have, for the most part, stalled, and Vietnam has initiated a severe crackdown on human rights defenders and advocates for the freedoms of speech, association and assembly, including many religious leaders who previously were the leading advocates for religious freedom in that country.
“Given the recent deterioration of human rights conditions in Vietnam and because of continued abuses of and restrictions on religious freedom, the Commission continues to believe that the lifting of the CPC designation was premature. We recommend that Vietnam be re-designated as a CPC in 2007.”
Church leaders of both unregistered and legally recognized groups in Vietnam, contacted on the eve of their president’s visit to Washington, unanimously called on their government to resume and accelerate the registration of congregations and move toward “regularizing” religion.
This process slowed considerably after Vietnam fulfilled its wish list from the United States – removal from the U.S. religious liberty blacklist, a state visit by President Bush, and U.S. support for membership in the WTO. Hundreds of applications by local congregations for registration, all carefully following government protocol, have gone unanswered in spite of legislative promises to reply within a set time, according to Compass.
Many believe Vietnam – an emerging economic powerhouse – has opened up to the world and that there is now little persecution. They may have not have stopped long enough to look and listen. Vietnam is not just comprised of the cities that are featured in travel and leisure shows. Hidden to the rest of the world are the rural villages in the north and in the Central Highlands, and access to them continues to be denied by the government. This is where most of the persecution is taking place, according to an Open Doors report.
The situation remains particularly hard for ethnic minority churches along the borders of Laos and China in Vietnam’s northwest provinces. In these remote places, lack of registration is still used as an excuse to break up or to prevent regular worship services.
The Evangelical Church of Vietnam (North) has submitted requests for well over 600 churches, and the Northwest Highlands reports only 31 church registrations. Only 13 of the 31 church registrations came after Vietnam’s status as a CPC was lifted last November, according to Compass.
Under pressure from human rights advocates, Vietnam did release three dissidents in advance of Triet’s U.S. trip. According to a report by the Vietnam Study Group, 38 dissidents have been arrested since August 2006, and since March 30, 2007, 20 of them have received sentences totaling 80 years.
Perpetrators of religious violations have shifted from the central government to the local government. This has made the situation more complicated. For one, the international community does not have as much access to local governments when it comes to information and accountability.
Compounding this is the convenience of hiding atrocities at the local level. Cordoning off a village or a community so that people, resources and information are unable to go in and out results in news blackouts most of the time.
Overall, vigilance is the key – vigilance in prayer, advocacy and all kinds of support to our persecuted brothers and sisters in Vietnam, especially those that live in the hidden, inaccessible parts of the country. We should not let down our guard. They are still persecuted, but the face of the persecutor has changed.
