Aid to the Church in Need: Vietnam: Oppression of religious communities by the state

Vietnam: Oppression of religious communities by the state

Posted by Information Report on 24/1/2003, 11:21 am
Message modified by board administrator 23/1/2003, 8:37 pm

Oppression by the state
The fact that the regime avoids an open and brutal persecution of the Church, in order not to attract the notice of its trading partners, should not delude us as to the fact that all the religious communities in Vietnam have to endure massive repression. In this way the communists hope to check the visible spread of religious life. Believers are in fact free to attend only a specific religious service in a specific parish - and this only in the larger cities, that are open to the scrutiny of foreign observers. Even then the priest still has to submit the text of every sermon to the state censors. And every Church activity that goes beyond the normal authorised Sunday service has to be granted specific approval by the local authorities.
In the provinces and above all in the mountain regions in the central highlands and the northwest of the country, the situation is still worse. Here the state continues to try and suppress all Church life. The authorities proceed with particular severity against the ethnic minorities, such as the Hmong, many of whom have converted to Catholic or Protestant Christianity in recent years. These minority peoples were driven over the course of the centuries from the coastlands and into the infertile mountain regions by the ethnic Vietnamese, to whom they are known as "Moi" or "savages". And on account of their striving for autonomy and their past collaboration with the French and Americans, they are perceived as a danger to "national security".
The true situation regarding religious liberty will be made clear by the following facts:
Just six seminaries are permitted in the entire country. Every two years a maximum of 10 seminarians from each diocese are permitted to train for the priesthood, although the number of those wishing to do so is many times higher than this.
Every candidate for the priesthood has to undergo repeated examinations to prove his "loyalty to the state". These take place before entry into the seminary, during his studies and again before ordination - which is likewise subject to state approval. And even when a candidate has managed to successfully negotiate all these hurdles, then he still requires a further approval before he can be appointed as a parish priest in a particular parish.
Many bishops are very old, since their appointment must likewise be approved by the state, and many of the candidates proposed by the Vatican have been rejected. As a result many dioceses remain orphaned for many years. To this day, for example, the vacant sees of Hai Phong and Hung Hoa cannot be filled.
Every Church gathering, every journey by bishops, every project for construction or repair of churches similarly requires state approval - which is frequently withheld for years.
Only a very few religious books are permitted to be printed, after strict censorship, and in one specifically designated printing house.
Equally, all the social activities of the Church are subject to state approval. However, the immense social problems of the country - corruption, unemployment and homelessness, rural emigration, Aids, drug addiction, abortions - have led increasingly, and above all in the South, to the Church being permitted to work for the easing of this human need. Subject always to the humours of the particular local authorities and block wardens, the Church can now organise kindergartens, primary schools and homes for street children. Near Saigon the Vincentian sisters have been permitted to open a centre for Aids patients. "Formerly they avoided us like the devil dodging holy water", one Saigon priest told us; now seven district secretaries of the communist party have knocked on his door to tell him of their concern at the drugs problem - that is affecting above all the sons and daughters of the communist nomenclature. However, in every case the permit to run a social institution can at any time be arbitrarily withdrawn. And the state also takes great care to ensure that the population see them and not the Church as being the initiator of this aid.
As long as the faithful and their priests remain within the tightly confined boundaries of their state permits, they generally remain unmolested. But anyone who is not content with this and demands genuine religious liberty from the state continues to be persecuted, just as before. One particularly serious example of this has been the victimisation of Father Nguyen Van Ly. The vaguely formulated criminal provisions offer an easy means of criminalising any such show of engaged religious “activism”. The hidden terror used against individuals or entire communities - through repeated house searches and interrogations, compulsory resettlement and house arrest - can often continue over years.
The Vietnamese Protestants and the other religious communities in the country, and above all all the Buddhists, the Hoa Hao Buddhists and the members of the syncretist Cao Dai religion, are subject to the same kind of restrictions as the Catholics. However, an added difficulty for them is that the state has succeeded in setting up parallel organisations under its own control. Only those who are willing to play the game can expect to be accorded a minimum of religious liberty.
Despite this all-pervasive control, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Vietnamese state to confine religious life. "Faced with the moral collapse of society and the growing social problems", says Jean-Christian Dhavernas, "more and more communist officials are beginning to remember their religious roots and are for the first time starting to send their families to church once again."
World trade and the Internet, as well as the international attention of the churches, the UN, the European parliament and human rights organisations, are making it more and more difficult for the government of Vietnam to maintain their chosen course. At the beginning of 2002, for the first time, all the Vietnamese bishops were permitted to leave the country for their ad limina visit to Rome, an event the Vatican news agency Fides described as "a sign of an improved climate between the communist government and the Catholic Church". Pope John Paul II urged the pastors of the Vietnamese Catholics to encourage their faithful, and above all their young people, to accept the challenge of the Gospel. "Let your example be the saints and martyrs who have gone before you along the path of holiness and the shedding of whose blood is a seed of new life for your entire country."
One of those who have gone before them in this way is Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, whom the Pope raised to the cardinalate as recently as 2001. Sadly, he did not live to see religious liberty respected in Vietnam or the Catholic Church free to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. For this "heroic apostle of the Gospel of Christ" (Pope John Paul II) died last September. "What a joy it would have been", he told the Pope, "to have seen my fellow priests, my friends and my family once again. But for all that my Faith was not for sale. It could not have been renounced at any price, not even the price of a happy life."
The most pressing needs of the Church
Just how closely the Vietnamese state controls the Church is shown by the list of her most urgent "wishes" - addressed by the chairman of the Vietnamese bishops' conference, Bishop Paul Nguyen van Hoa, to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai at the New Year's reception in Hanoi on 29 December 2001:
- our priests and our religious brothers and sisters must be able to receive an appropriate training in order to be able to make a constructive contribution in the field of social care, education and health.
- the formation of the seminarians in the major seminaries must follow the same lines as those that are usual in the universities. Hence, new admissions must be allowed annually, in line with the criteria established by the Church. Following the first examination by the civil authorities on entry into the major seminary, the seminarians should not have to submit themselves to this examination again until their ordination or their appointment in the parishes.
- the construction of an institution in Xuan Loc, attached to the major seminary of Saigon, has been proposed many times by the bishops' conference (...)
- many parishes have been unable to build their churches, even though the priests are present among them and ministering to them.
- we demand the return to the Church of confiscated properties and religious buildings belonging to the congregations. (...)
The Church must be free to receive religious publications in foreign languages without hindrance.
Vietnam - Dates and facts
Name: Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Population: 80 million, of whom 87% ethnic Vietnamese
58 ethnic minorities
Area: 331,689 sq. km (Cf. Germany: 357,022 sq. km)
Capital: Hanoi
President Tran Duc Luong
Head of Govt. Phan Van Khai
Religion: Buddhist: 60 - 80%
Catholics: 7%
Hoa Hao Buddhists: 3-5%
Cao Dai (syncretist religion): 3-5%
Protestants: 1%
Catholics in Vietnam - dates and facts
Total numbers: 6 million, or 7% of the population; of these approximately two thirds live in South Vietnam, and there are additionally around half a million living abroad.
Growth since 1997: 14.4% (as against 5.3% for the population as a whole)
Dioceses: 25
Seminaries: 6
Bishops: 37 (of whom 8 are retired)
Diocesan priests: 2,100
Religious priests: 1,850 (up by 78% since 1997)
Religious sisters 9,650 (up by 51% since 1997)
President of the Bishops’ Conference: Paul Nguyen Van Hoa (bishop of Nha Trang)
Photo: Seminarians praying before a makeshift altar in Vietnam

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