The U.S. may be opening up an embassy in Hanoi, but most doors remain
closed for Vietnamese believers
by William Bole
While enjoying better relations with the United States, the
Vietnamese government has nonetheless continued to suppress religious
freedom, insisting on control over the activities of the Catholic
Church and other faith groups, according to human-rights analysts.
At the same time, observers agree that the situation of religious
believers has improved in the past few years. Some even see a
religious revival underway despite the rule of hard-line communists.
Those recent assessments came on the heels of the decision by the
United States to re- establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam, 20
years after the end of the Vietnam War.
In making the announcement earlier this month, President Clinton
said, "Let this moment, in the words of the Scripture, be a time to
heal and a time to build."
The resumed diplomatic ties symbolize a healing of war wounds between
the two countries, progress toward a full accounting of American
soldiers missing in action and the Vietnamese government's policy of
economic liberalization.
But the new freedoms granted to entrepreneurs and capitalists in
Vietnam have not been matched by an equal tolerance of religious
belief and political dissent, according to Western organizations that
monitor human rights.
And there is criticism by some that the Clinton administration acted
too soon in extending diplomatic recognition to Vietnam, although
Church officials have applauded the action.
SELECT FREEDOMS
"The place is still extremely oppressive. There is no religious
freedom, no political freedom, no freedom of trade unionism," said
Nina Shea, president of the Puebla Institute, a Washington-based
group that monitors religious freedom.
Last year, the Puebla Institute issued a 113-page report titled
"Vietnam: Free Market, Captive Conscience," which focused on
religious repression in that country. The report concluded that
progress toward religious freedom has lagged far behind economic
reforms.
But there has been progress, Shea said.
"For a long time, people were too afraid to go to church. That
situation has changed. Things are better. People are packing the
Masses. Last Christmas, congregations were overflowing onto the
streets," she said.
"People are turning out. There is an outpouring of Catholic faith."
From Vietnam have come reports of renewed popular interest in many
forms of religion and spirituality, even amid the clampdown on
churches and sects. The Manchester Guardian recently told of the
trends in a dispatch titled "Hanoi frowns as gods stage a comeback."
"There have certainly been improvements in the situation of ordinary
believers," said Dinah PoKempner, an associate with the Asia bureau
of Human Rights Watch, a private organization based in New York. "The
government is moving slowly and cautiously toward greater latitude
for believers."
Still, the Vietnamese government has remained "very uncomfortable
with institutional autonomy" among religious bodies, PoKempner said.
That discomfort shows in Vietnam's policies toward the Catholic
Church.
In a major point of contention, the government has assumed veto power
over the appointment of bishops, something that Rome considers a
basic religious right. For this reason, several major dioceses remain
without bishops.
Some priests and nuns designated as religious dissidents have been
freed from prison or house arrest, but the government places severe
limits on the work of their religious orders.
The seminaries are open, following the darker days of religious
repression beginning with the communist takeover in 1975, but state
officials still exert control over who gets into the seminary, and
who gets ordained after completing studies toward the priesthood,
according to human-rights analysts.
And so there is a backlog of seminary candidates, and a troubling
shortage of priests.
There are unconfirmed reports that some bishops have begun to
secretly ordain priests to meet the pastoral needs of Catholics-an
estimated 6 million, or 7 percent of the Vietnamese population.
Yet, even in areas with priests, the Church finds it hard to carry
out its mission. Strict control is said to remain over nearly all
pastoral activities, including religious education and charitable
work. "What they're trying to do is crack down on the hierarchy and
decapitate the Church," said Shea. "In Vietnam, you're allowed to
hold Mass at a certain time and certain place, and that's about it."
As bad as things are for Catholics, they are even worse for the more
numerous Buddhists and the many fewer evangelical Protestants who
worship in rural house churches, according to Western human-rights
monitors.
While trying in more subtle ways to control and manipulate the
Catholic Church, the government has used cruder methods against other
faith groups, reported the Puebla Institute. The report cited
continued arrests, torture and imprisonment.
Part of the explanation offered is that Buddhists and rural
Protestants have fewer connections to the outside world than do
Catholics, who are city-dwellers for the most part and members of a
global Church institution.
Some U.S. Catholic human-rights activists think the Clinton
administration acted prematurely in resuming formal ties to Vietnam.
PRACTICAL MATTERS
"As a practical matter, they [U.S. officials] should have gotten
concessions for human rights in Vietnam, before they did it," said
Shea.
Officially, however, the Church-at all levels, including the
Vatican-has favored closer relations between the United States and
Vietnam.
Within hours of President Clinton's announcement, the U.S. bishops
issued a statement welcoming the move, expressing hope that it would
"improve and strengthen discussions between our two countries on
matters of great concern, especially human rights and religious
freedom, the MIA-POW question, and refugee and immigration concerns."
On numerous occasions, the bishops have pressed American officials to
put human rights high on the agenda of talks with Vietnam. For the
United States, however, this matter has tended to rate far below
concerns about American soldiers listed as prisoners of war or
missing in action.
"We welcome this step, then, not as a sign of approval of a regime
that still fails to assure the full rights of its people, but as a
means of strengthening the needed dialogue, of making more effective
our concerns for the people of Vietnam, and of moving forward in
healing the wounds of war," said Bishop Daniel P. Reilly of
Worcester, Mass., head of the bishops' Committee on International
Policy.
Thomas Quigley, an adviser on international affairs for the U.S.
bishops, said the Church believes formal relations will advance the
cause of human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam. The same
opinion was offered by exiled Vietnamese Archbishop Francis Xavier
Nguyen Van Thuan of Ho Chi Minh City, in a talk given to a New York
audience during his June visit to the United States.
But the manner in which Vietnamese authorities have dealt with
Archbishop Thuan, who has been co-administrator of the Archdiocese of
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, since 1975, is an obvious example
of the government's strict control over religion in the country.
Archbishop Thuan spent 13 years in a Vietnamese prison camp. He
gained permission to visit the Vatican in 1991, only to find that it
was a trick: the government refused to let him back into the country.
Last November, the Vatican named Archbishop Thuan vice president of
the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The appointment was
generally taken as a sign that the Vatican does not think the
archbishop will be able to return anytime soon.
Meanwhile, the largest Catholic community in the country, the
Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City, with 500,000 Catholics, remains
without a bishop, following the death early last month of 84-year-old
Archbishop Paul Nguyen Van Binh.
