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********** VIETNAM ANNOUNCES NEW MEASURES TO CONTROL RELIGION Greater Communist Infiltration of Religious Organizations Planned Special to Compass Direct

HO CHI MINH CITY, January 28 (Compass) — The powerful Central Committee of Vietnam’s Communist Party went into its Seventh Plenum on January 13 promising to carefully address the sensitive issues of religion, land and ethnic minority unrest. It emerged nine days later, on January 21, to announce that it had passed four new resolutions, including one to better control religion.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan, this was the first time the Central Committee has passed a resolution specifically on religion. Usually, religious matters are left to lower, less powerful governmental bodies.

The issues arose because of minority unrest in the Central Highlands two years ago over confiscated land and lack of religious freedom. Vietnam responded to that unrest in a heavy-handed way. It has been accused by organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of serious human rights violations of Montagnards, a collective name for Vietnam’s many minority tribal groups inhabiting the Central Highlands. Compass reported last month that authorities had disbanded over 400 churches in Dak Lak province alone in the fall of 2002, falsely accusing virtually all minority Christians of involvement in a political plot to overthrow the regime.

According to an official communiqu © provided to Compass by Vietnamese sources, the resolution on religion appears aimed at Vietnam’s six approved religions. It calls for the establishment of cells of Communist Party members within the approved religious organizations.

A January 27 “South China Morning Post” article described the development as “cementing the control of religion from within.”

Vietnam observers believe this will cause problems for the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), which received legal recognition two years ago. So far, the ECVN (S) has successfully resisted being controlled by a small number of “government-friendly” leaders who have close relations with the Bureau of Religious Affairs.

Protestant Christian leaders, many of whom belong to groups still considered illegal by the government, express even more alarm. They reason that if “legal” religious organizations will be subject to an “increase of state management and guidance of religious affairs,” then pressure will increase on the majority of Protestants, especially Montagnard and Hmong Christians, whom the government considers illegal. These groups have long been subject to Vietnam’s internal policy on religion, with its systematic campaigns of harassment, control, repression, and persecution.

Vietnam also calls on religious believers to “volunteer” in the struggle “to foil hostile forces who abuse religious and ethnic minority issues to sabotage the great national unity and act against the political regime.” Any questioning of the regime’s policies is illegal and considered a hostile activity.

It is certain that the effects of harsher scrutiny of religion will serve to drive even more religious activity underground. This is happening at a time when Vietnam has been severely criticized by governments and by human rights organizations, and has been on a public relations blitz to try to convince the world that it is making steady progress in the area of human rights.

“Vietnam is clearly going backwards,” is how one long-time Vietnam observer summarized recent events. “When you hear words like ‘guidance’ and ‘control’ and ‘hostile forces’ in connection with religion, you can be sure people of the Christian faith will suffer even more.”

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