release the Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang, a human rights defender and activist leader of the banned Mennonite church in Vietnam" and end the apparently wide spread persecution of Protestant Christians.
In a statement monitored by BosNewsLife early Saturday, June 12, the leading human rights organization said that Quang was arrested Tuesday, June 8, "in the midst of a massive crackdown against Montagnard Protestants in the Central Highland."
The 45-year old believer is general secretary of the Mennonite Church in Vietnam and, trained as a lawyer, has reportedly defended land rights cases of impoverished farmers from the provinces, spoken out against the arrests of religious and political dissidents, and publicized the plight of minority Christian churches in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
He has been prevented from officially practicing as a lawyer because it is necessary to be a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam in order to obtain a license. Many of his critical writings have been disseminated on the Internet in both Vietnamese and English, Human Rights Watch added.
STRONGLY WORDED ESSAY
In September, Quang issued a strongly worded essay via the Internet that criticized the trial and convictions of several relatives of one of Vietnam’s most prominent political prisoners, Father Nguyen Van Ly. Father Ly, a Roman Catholic, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2001 for "undermining the policy of national unity" after he submitted written testimony to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In addition Quang and 30 other church leaders held a sit-in in December at a police station in Ho Chi Minh City to protest the arrests of 19 Christians who were detained for distributing religious pamphlets during the Southeast Asia Games in Ho Chi Minh City.
"Quang’s arrest appears to be part of the Vietnamese government’s mounting repression of activists who promote human rights or religious freedom," said Dinah PoKempner, general counsel at the organization.
40 TIMES ARRESTED
Rev. Quang, who has reportedly been arrested about 40 times and jailed on five occasions, said in an interview that his group has 11,000 members and 130 house-churches. We "believe in peace and oppose war and demonstrations," he told The Washington Times newspaper earlier this year.
More than 200 Mennonites in Vietnam are in jail for their beliefs, according to the group. But Vietnamese officials, who say the banned religious groups are actually disguised political organizations aimed at overthrowing the government, have turned the issue into a matter of national security, The Washington Times reported.
Under Vietnamese legislation religious freedom extends only to officially approved organizations, which are subject to broad government control over their activities. Any religious group unwilling to submit to that control can only organize illegally, in which case the government assumes the right to persecute its members and confiscate its property.
DOZENS OF POLICE
Human Rights Warch said it has information that Quang was arrested on June 8 on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City "by 30 police officers and taken to the jail at the District 2 Public Security Police Station." It reported that "police cordoned off and searched Quang’s home, which serves as a Mennonite church as well as his legal office."
The human rights organization claimed police also "ransacked the office and confiscated his computer, personal papers and numerous documents, including his legal files on human rights cases he is defending. He has reportedly been charged with "instigating people to obstruct officials from carrying out their duties."
These charges against the Mennonite clergyman apparently refer to an altercation in March between Quang and members of his church with police officers who had been harassing and monitoring Mennonite church members, including the head of the Mennonite church in Kontum province in the Central Highlands, Human Rights Watch explained.
CHURCH MEMBERS BEATEN
"On March 2, dozens of church members gathered at Quang’s church after a dispute broke out between police and several Mennonites, who had photographed the motorbike of one of the plainclothes police officers posted outside the church. More than 100 paramilitary police officers from Unit 113 of the Ministry of Public Security were dispatched to the scene, where they scuffled with the crowd of church members. Police arrested four church members: church elder Nguyen Hieu Nghia, and evangelists Nguyen Thanh Nhan, Pham Ngoc Thach and Nguyen van Phuong, all of whom were severely beaten.
Since the March incident, Quang and his colleagues have mounted a campaign to call attention to the arrests and possible torture of the four Mennonites, who have been detained for more than two months without official orders being issued for their imprisonment or the prosecution of their cases.
On May 18, Quang released an eight-page report on the March arrests that included a section entitled "Violations of the Law by Public Security Officers of District 2 and Ho Chi Minh City in the Forcible Detention of the Four Mennonite Evangelists." Quang argued that the police officers had violated numerous articles of Vietnam’s penal code in carrying out the arrests.
CRITICIZING INJUSTICE
"People should not be arrested for criticizing injustice or asking government officials to abide by their own laws," said PoKempner. "Once again, Vietnam’s government has shown it will go to any length to silence those who dare to speak out about religious repression, arbitrary confiscation of land, and the rights of ethnic minorities."
A U.S. State Department report on religious freedom points out that "strict restrictions on the hierarchies and clergy of religious groups remained in place, and the government maintained supervisory control of the recognized religions." It notes that "the Communist Party fears that not only organized religion, but any organized group outside its control or supervision may weaken its authority and influence by serving as political, social and spiritual alternatives to the authority of the central government."
The Washington Times quoted one U.S. official engaged in American-Vietnamese relations as saying that "everything that goes well between the United States and Vietnam is contaminated by" the issue of religious persecution.
RELATIONSHIP POISONED
He reportedly said Vietnamese are told at every meeting between the two countries: "We have such a wide-ranging relationship now, we developed it so quickly and so completely, and yet the more you persist in violating the individual rights of these people, the more you poison the entire relationship."
However Vietnamese officials say that America has no right to speak about human rights as it bombed their country during the Vietnam war, increasing fears among human rights watchers that this will be used as an excuse to further persecute Christians.
