Bipartisan Panel Calls For Vietnam's Return to Religious Freedoms Blacklist
By
Richard Finney - RFA
4/30/2015
A U.S.
bipartisan commission called on Thursday for Vietnam to be returned to a State
Department blacklist of the world’s worst abusers of religious freedoms, urging
at the same time that the places of China, Myanmar, and North Korea on the list
be maintained.
Vietnam, under one-party communist rule, continues to “severely restrict
independent religious practice, and repress individuals and religious groups it
views as challenging its authority,” the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in an annual report.
The State Department included Vietnam on its list of Countries of Particular
Concern (CPC) in 2004 but removed it from the blacklist two years later amid
improving diplomatic relations, and has since ignored repeated calls by the
commission to reinstate the country’s designation.
Despite “some improvements” in religious freedoms noted during the last year in
Vietnam, the country’s government “requires religious organizations and
congregations to register with a state-sanctioned entity in order to be
considered legal,” USCIRF said in its report.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday to announce the report’s release, USCIRF chair
Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett noted that Vietnam employs “a variety of mechanisms” to
control religious practice in the country.
“This is something that we remain very, very concerned about,” Swett said.
“We do continue to recommend that Vietnam be designated as a CPC. We think it’s
warranted, we think that facts back that up. And I would point out that despite
progress in some other areas, we do feel that Vietnam’s human rights record
remains very poor—specifically, its religious freedoms record.”
Further deterioration
For its report last year, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. Secretary of State
maintain the status of eight countries already present on the CPC list including
China, Myanmar, and North Korea.
“Not one of them has significantly improved its record,” Swett said, while in
China, “We have seen signs of further deterioration.”
USCIRF noted that China under its new president Xi Jinping had worked during the
last year to further tighten controls over “all aspects of its citizens’ lives.”
“For religious freedom, this has meant unprecedented violations against Uighur
Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, and Falun Gong
practitioners,” with religious believers facing fines, lengthy prison sentences,
and the destruction of places of worship.
At least 400 churches were torn down or had crosses removed from public view,
with most demolitions taking place in China’s coastal Zhejiang province, USCIRF
said.
Leaders of both registered and unregistered, or "house," churches had also faced
harassment and arbitrary arrest, USCIRF said, with some house church pastors
classified by authorities as leaders of "cults."
In Myanmar, designated a CPC since 1999, religious and ethnic minorities
“continued to experience intolerance, discrimination, and violence,” USCIRF said
in its report.
Abuses by nationalist Buddhists against the Rohingya Muslim minority group were
especially severe, the rights group said.
Myanmar’s government has shown itself unwilling to intervene or to investigate
and prosecute abusers, though, and “the introduction of four discriminatory race
and religion bills in 2014 could well further entrench such prejudices,” USCIRF
said.
Christian areas of Myanmar also experienced discriminatory practices at the
hands of Buddhist state officials, according to the report.
Severe persecution
In North Korea, also listed as a CPC, “genuine freedom of religion or belief is
non-existent,” USCIRF said.
“Individuals secretly engaging in religious activities are subject to arrest,
torture, imprisonment, and sometimes execution,” the rights group said, with
North Koreans suspected of contacts with foreign missionaries singled out for
especially harsh treatment.
All religious practice outside of state control is restricted in North Korea,
but Christians experience the most severe persecution, according to the USCIRF
report, which noted that Christianity is associated with “the United States and
Western ideology” and is therefore considered especially threatening to the
regime.
“It is estimated that tens of thousands of Christians in North Korea are
currently in prison camps facing hard labor or execution,” the report said.
The Southeast Asian nation of Laos meanwhile remains on USCIRF’s Tier 2 “Watch
List” for continuing “serious religious freedom abuses,” the rights group said
in its report.
Countries on the Tier 2 Watch List have engaged in violations which, while not
rising to CPC status, are considered significant and serious.
Laos—like Vietnam, China, and North Korea a one-party communist state—allowed
ongoing abuses during 2014 against religious minority groups, “abuses that are
most prominent in remote, rural areas,” USCIRF said.
“Moreover, the government’s suspicion of Protestant Christianity as a ‘Western’
or ‘American’ construct continued to result in discrimination, harassment, and
arrests of Christians throughout the country.”
Abuses were especially noted in Laos’s Savannakhet Province, where Christians
were reported to have been ordered by local officials to renounce their faith,
USCIRF said.
“Based on these concerns, in 2015 USCIRF again places Laos on Tier 2, where it
has been since 2009.”