In 2006, the U.S. State Department removed Vietnam from its list of
Countries of Particular Concern, citing the release of religious
prisoners and the easing of religious restrictions. Two months later,
the United States granted Vietnam permanent normal trade status, paving
the way for Vietnam to join the World Trade Organization in January
2007.
As soon as the regime had secured its goals, however, it unleashed a
crack-down. Among the first to be arrested was internationally acclaimed
human rights lawyer and religious liberty advocate Nguyen Van Dai, a
Protestant Christian.
Arrested on March 6, 2007, and deemed guilty of violating Article 88 of
the criminal code – “conducting propaganda against the state” – Nguyen
Van Dai spent the next four years in prison in Hanoi (to March 2011)
followed by four years house arrest (to March 2015).
Dai, 47, was subsequently re-arrested on Dec. 16, 2015, as he was
preparing to meet with European Union representatives who were in Hanoi
for the annual EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue. He is being held
incommunicado, charged with violating Article 88, the maximum sentence
for which is 20 years.
Denied access to her husband and fearing abusive treatment and unjust
processes, Dai’s wife, Vu Minh Khanh – also a strong Christian and
courageous religious liberty advocate – is seeking assistance from the
world’s leading democracies.
On May 10, Khanh presented her testimony to the U.S. House of
Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa,
Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
chaired by Rep. Chris Smith. She is now in Australia, traveling with
Vietnam Voice. http://vietnamvoice.org/
Green Light for Repression
On May 23, while on an official visit to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack
Obama lifted the decades-long embargo on selling lethal weapons to
Vietnam without requiring any concessions in return.
This despite the fact that the Vietnam Humans Rights Act of 2015 states, “It is the sense of
Congress that: it shall be U.S. policy that further easing of the prohibition on the sale of lethal
military equipment to Vietnam shall require Vietnam to take additional and sustained steps to
advance human rights protections.”
Smith called Obama’s move an “epic failure of diplomacy.” Phil
Robertson, deputy director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch
agreed.
“In one fell swoop, President Obama has jettisoned what remained of U.S. leverage to improve
human rights in Vietnam – and has basically gotten nothing for it,” Robertson said.
In giving the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam exactly what it wanted
without requiring anything in return, Obama has essentially given the
party a green light to further escalate repression and persecution.
Consequently, religious liberty advocates hold grave fears for Dai and
Khanh, especially as those fears are personified in the plight of pastor
Nguyen Cong Chinh and his wife, Tran Thi Hong.
Persecution Paradigm
The Rev. Nguyen Cong Chinh, a 45-year-old Protestant in the Central
Highlands province of Gai Lai, has suffered systematic, violent
persecution at the hands of Communist Party officials since 2003, when
he protested ethnic-religious persecution and appealed for religious
liberty.
Arrested on April 28, 2011, Pastor Chinh was sentenced on July 31, 2012
to 11 years in prison for violating Article 87 of the criminal code,
“undermining national unity.” In prison, he has been subjected to
lengthy periods of solitary confinement, numerous beatings, deprivations
(including being denied the right to pray), and humiliating and
traumatizing Cultural-Revolution- style criticism sessions that fuel
inmate hostility against him.
Also targeted for systematic violent persecution is Pastor Chinh’s
wife, Tran Thi Hong, for she too is a courageous religious liberty
advocate.
On March 30 March, local regime officials forcefully prevented Hong
from attending her scheduled meeting with a U.S. delegation led by David
Saperstein, Ambassador-at-Large on International Religious Freedom. The
meeting only went ahead after Hong managed to inform Saperstein that
she had been ambushed, seized and escorted back home, at which point
Saperstein intervened.
On the morning of April 14, however, officials abducted Hong from her
home and took her to the office of the People’s Committee of Hoa Lu
Ward, where she was interrogated and beaten by plainclothes agents for
three hours, leaving her with injuries to her head, knees, legs, hands,
and feet.
In May, Hong was forcibly dragged to the police station and
interrogated on May 11, 12, 13, 27 and 28. On May 13, when her
distressed 18-year- old son tried to protect her, he too was assaulted,
strangled, bound and detained for the rest of the day.
Attracting Interest
The violent persecution of Hong and the re-arrest of Dai and have not
gone unnoticed. On April 26, Amnesty International demanded “a prompt,
impartial, independent and effective investigation” into “the alleged
torture of Mrs. Tran Thi Hong.”
On June 2, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR) called on the government of Vietnam to stop the
persecution of Hong, “who has been repeatedly arrested and tortured as
retaliation for informing the international community of human rights
violations against her husband, who is in prison for peaceful religious
activities.”
On June 7, a joint motion was tabled in the European Parliament
requesting a debate on cases of breaches of human rights, democracy and
the rule of law in Vietnam: European Parliament resolution on Vietnam
(2016/2755(RSP)) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B8-2016-0761&format=XML&language=EN
New Dynamic Creates Opportunity
China’s territorial expansion in and militarization of the South China
Sea has Vietnam looking for friends and allies. This new dynamic gives
Western democracies more leverage with Vietnam than they have had in
years.
What post-Christian “progressive” Western elites need to understand is
that in Vietnam, the church is integral to civil society and is at the
center of virtually all humanitarian, pro-democracy, and human rights
work.
Consequently, a strong defense of religious freedom is a highly
strategic means of advancing humanitarian work, human rights advocacy,
and capacity building to further democracy and
liberty.
Elizabeth Kendal is a religious liberty analyst and advocate. The
author of two books, she publishes a weekly Religious Liberty Prayer
Bulletin, serves as the Director of Advocacy at Christian Faith and
Freedom (CFF) Canberra, and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur
Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology
(MST). www.ElizabethKendal.com
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