options Monday, February 7, after the government said they will be allowed to operate, if they revoke all ties to a guerrilla group that fought alongside the United States during the Vietnam war.
The government decree will especially effect Christians in Vietnam’s restive Central Highlands,
known as Montagnards, news reports said. The Montagnards will be allowed "normal religious activities at home or at suitable places in their villages", if they end their support for what is known as the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO), Prime Minister Phan van Khai was quoted as saying in state controlled media.
"If the religious followers there [in the Central Highlands] have pure religious needs, commit to abiding by the law, do not work for the reactionary FULRO, and have no connection to Dega Protestantism, the local governments will create conditions for them to carry out normal religious activities…" he was quoted as saying by the Liberated Saigon newspaper.
His surprise announcement came just days after the Communist authorities said they would release over 8,000 prisoners, including famous Christian and political dissidents, to celebrate Vietnam’s Lunar New Year.
Among those receiving amnesty was Roman Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly, 58, and physician Nguyen Dan Que, 62, along with two other key prisoners of conscience. But church sources cautioned that two other well known Christian activists, Reverend Nguyen Hong Quang and evangelist Pham Ngoc Thach of the Vietnam Mennonite Church, are still awaiting their appeal hearing, one year after they were arrested in a crack down.
NO SILENT CHRISTMAS
In addition Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that in the weeks leading up to Christmas, "police were busy rounding up and arresting dozens of Montagnard Christians and detaining them at district and provincial police stations and prisons throughout the region. In Gia Lai province alone one of five provinces in the Central Highlands police arrested 129 people between December 12 and 24."
"The Vietnamese government’s mistreatment of Montagnards continues unabated," added Brad Adams, executive director of HRW’s Asia Division, in a statement monitored by BosNewsLife. "Instead of closing its borders to asylum seekers, the Cambodian government should be working with the United Nations refugee agency to provide sanctuary to people escaping torture and arbitrary arrest."
Yet analysts say the Vietnam government decree on house churches shows it has come under international and domestic pressure to improve human rights, including freedom of religion. Last Easter, thousands of mainly Christian Montagnards reportedly took to the streets to protest against government confiscation of lands and repression of their faith.
MORE PROTESTS HELD
Similar protests broke out in 2001, the Associated Press (AP) reported. International human rights groups said at least 10 protesters were killed, and they condemned the beatings and arrests of dozens of other Montagnards during recent protests, AP reported. Vietnam maintains only two died and Hanoi blames the U.S-based Montagnard Foundation, led by a former FULRO leader, Kok Ksor, with fomenting the unrest.
Ksor has reportedly denied the charges saying that his group is working for the rights of indigenous people, who are believed to be among the country’s poorest and most disadvantaged groups.
Vietnam also cracked down hard on practitioners of Dega Protestantism, forcing public renunciations of faith. Hanoi maintains that no one is persecuted for religious reasons. However, only six government-sanctioned religions are recognized and permitted to worship.
Last year, Vietnam was named by the U.S. State Department as one of the most intolerant countries in the world regarding religious freedom. Under the designation, American President George Bush has until March 15 to decide whether to impose economic sanctions on Vietnam.
(With: Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, BosNewsLife News Center, Reports from within and outside Vietnam).
