Not a
prayer for US-Vietnam
diplomacy By Scott Johnson
While much has been made of the role
leaked confidential United States diplomatic
cables have played in the political convulsions
now sweeping the Middle East and North Africa,
there is at least one batch of documents that show
how US President Barack Obama's government has
willfully looked away from sustained abuses
committed by an emerging strategic ally in Asia:
Vietnam. The cables in question, entitled
"Vietnam Religious Freedom Update - the Case
Against CPC [Country of Particular Concern]", were
written in 2010 by US ambassador to Vietnam
Michael Michalak and published by WikiLeaks in
January this year. The leaked correspondence which
assessed Vietnam's freedom of
religion situation blatantly
failed to mention the hundreds of Christian
Montagnards, or Degar people, currently imprisoned
for practicing their religion and the sustained
persecution of independent house churches.
The leaked cables dismiss Vietnam's
religious repression as "primarily land issues"
and that such actions "should not divert our
attention from the significant gains in expanding
religious freedom that Vietnam has made".
For years, human-rights groups and
concerned US Congressmen have complained about
Vietnam's abysmal freedom of religion record. The
US State Department, keen to foster ties with
Hanoi in a bid to counterbalance China's regional
rise, has through its silence effectively
validated Vietnam's consistent denials about
committing human-rights abuses, including its
persecution of the Montagnards.
A recent
report by rights watchdog Human Rights Watch
entitled "Montagnard Christians in Vietnam: A Case
Study in Religious Repression" states that "during
the last decade, the Vietnamese government has
launched a series of crackdowns on Montagnards in
the Central Highlands" and "more than 350
Montagnards have been sentenced to long prison
sentences on vaguely-defined national security
charges for their involvement in public protests
and unregistered house churches".
The
report notes that the "arrests are ongoing, with
more than 70 Montagnards arrested or detained
during 2010" and "at least 25 Montagnards have
died in prisons, jails, or police lock-ups after
beatings or illnesses sustained while in custody".
In 2004, the State Department designated
Vietnam as a CPC, which places it on an official
watch list punishable by sanctions of nations that
habitually commit egregious violations of
religious freedom. At the time Vietnam was
desperately seeking accession to the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and effectively required
Washington's approval through normal trade
relations to join the club.
The two sides
negotiated to remove Vietnam as a CPC in 2006
after Hanoi committed to improve its rights record
and subsequently normalized trade ties. However,
soon after Vietnam entered the WTO in January 2007
the communist-led regime reverted to its old
repressive ways. Out of diplomatic expediency or
embarrassment, the plight of the Montagnards and
other persecuted religious groups has since been
ignored by the State Department.
In light
of the US's deep history with the Montagnards,
that blind eye is an act of betrayal. Tens of
thousands of Montagnards were recruited and
trained by US troops and were loyally served
Washington during the Vietnam War. Their bravery
in fighting against the communists was legendary,
according to US soldier accounts. Over the life of
the conflict it was estimated some 100,000
Montagnards fought alongside US troops and at any
given time some 30,000 were actively serving. By
the end of the war in 1975, an estimated quarter
of the Montagnard population, or over 200,000
people, had perished in the conflict.
The
survivors were left to face unassisted the
victorious communists' vengeance. On taking over
South Vietnam, the communists imprisoned and
executed the Montagnard's political and religious
leaders. The wider Montagnard population was
subjected to forced relocations and thousands were
condemned to live on some of the country's poorest
cropland. The military also deforested the
Montagnard's ancestral lands while expanding their
logging operations into neighboring Laos and
Cambodia. The Montagnards have been deliberately
marginalized as losers of the war and survive
today in a cycle of crushing poverty.
Disposable allies Take, for
instance, the case of Puih Hbat, a Montagnard
Christian and mother of four whose father served
with the US during the Vietnam War. On April 11,
2008, in the dead of night, eight security
officials bundled her off screaming into a waiting
truck that took her to prison. Her crime: hosting
Christian prayer services in her longhouse.
Tellingly, her name did not appear in the leaked
US cable that claimed to assess Vietnam's freedom
of religion situation.
Yet the State
Department has detailed knowledge of her and
hundreds of other Montagnards now in detention. In
2006, John Q Adams, then the State Department's
Vietnam desk officer, received a painstakingly
detailed report with names and photographs of over
350 Montagnard prisoners arrested for non-violent
activities, including merely practicing their
faith.
These same prisoners have also been
documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and the US Commission on
International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). In
January 2009, the European Parliament confirmed
Puih Hbat had been imprisoned "for leading prayer
services for Christians in her house". Sources
confirm that US Embassy officials in Hanoi had
investigated her arrest.
The leaked cables
make repeated mention of the "significant gains"
Vietnam has supposedly made on upholding religious
freedoms. That assessment includes references to
the "registration of scores of new religions" and
the "training of hundreds of new Protestant and
Catholic clergy".
"Registration" and
"training" are in reality codewords for mechanisms
of state control over religious congregations. The
so-called "new religions" are in fact government
implemented programs designed to control how
Vietnamese practice their faith. Hanoi has changed
only its tactics of repression since being dropped
as a CPC in 2006.
Since then thousands of
Montagnard Christians have been arrested, beaten,
tortured and then released in a deliberate policy
to repress house churches from expanding their
memberships. Over the past decade, Protestant
congregations, many of which meet and pray
underground, have reportedly grown by 600%, a
statistic that has reportedly alarmed communist
officials. By praising the successful expansion of
government registered churches, including the
Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam, the State
Department has effectively legitimized the
communist government's oppressive tactics against
independent churches.
The USCIRF, an
independent US federal agency, has called for
Vietnam to be redesignated a CPC every year since
it was delisted in 2006. In May 2010, the agency
specifically identified Montagnard prisoners as
just cause for redesignation.
It stated
that "hundreds of Montagnard Protestants arrested
after the 2001 and 2004 demonstrations for
religious freedom and land rights remain in
detention in the Central Highlands. The
circumstances and charges leveled against them are
difficult to determine, but there is enough
evidence available to determine that peaceful
religious leaders and adherents were arrested and
remain incarcerated."
The USCIRF also said
"The State Department's standard for determining
who is a religious ‘prisoner of concern' draws an
arbitrary line between 'political' and 'religious'
activity not found in international human-rights
law." In other words, the USCIRF believes that the
State Department makes up its own rules of
classification when dealing with Vietnam. The
leaked cables, meanwhile, show that US diplomats
have ignored the fate of Montagnard prisoners
while simultaneously praising the ruling
communist's intensifying controls over religion.
Puih Hbat and hundreds of other
Montagnards languish in prison for practicing
their faith while the Obama administration
concentrates on building strategic ties with
Vietnam's communist regime. While her now deceased
father served proudly with US forces against those
same communists during the Vietnam War, it's
unclear whether he would have sided with the
Americans knowing that some 40 years later the US
government would fail to acknowledge his
wrongfully imprisoned daughter's and other
Montagnard's ongoing plight.
Scott
Johnson is a lawyer, writer and human-rights
activist focusing on tribal peoples from Southeast
Asia. He may be reached at
scottmfi@hotmail.com.
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