Burma / Myanmar
Burma/Myanmar is home to more than 135 ethnic groups, the largest of which is the predominantly Buddhist Bama (or Burman) nation, which comprises 60 percent of the population.
However, 57 percent of the land mass of Burma is occupied by the country’s ethnic minority nations, most of which are not Buddhist. The Chin (in the west, bordering India) and the Kachin (in the north, bordering China) are Christian nations, while Burma’s largest ethnic minority nation, the Karen – which includes the Karreni – (in the east, bordering Thailand) is estimated to be between 30-40 percent Christian.
Most of Burma’s Christians are Protestant; mainly Baptist, the legacy of American Baptist pioneer missionary Adoniram Judson (1788-1850).
Adoniram and Ann Judson arrived in Burma as pioneer missionaries in 1813. Despite enduring severe hardship, mortal dangers, violent persecutions, brutal imprisonment, and grief upon grief, Adoniram Judson managed to compile a grammar of the Burmese language, translate the Bible into Burmese, and lead the first converts to Jesus Christ. The influence of Ann Judson in this work cannot be overstated. Not only did she encourage and support Adonirum in all his work, Ann kept Adoniram alive in prison, guaranteed his language work was preserved, and courageously intervened (at great personal risk) to save him from execution. Critically, like many Christian missionaries (then and now), Ann Judson pioneered and championed girls’ education in Burma.
Documentary film:
Adoniram and Ann Judson: Spent For God (2018),
By Robert Fernandez; a production of Christian History Institute,
featuring Dr. Reid Trulson, Rosalee Hall Hunt, Dr Evan Burns and Allen Yeh (64 minutes).
At that time (19th Century), Burma was a feudal society, dominated by ethnic Bama Buddhists who looked down on the other mostly animist ethnic nations amongst them and treated them as worthless serfs or slaves.
The ethnic minorities embraced Christianity in part because it liberated them from the life of fear inherent in animism, but also because through it these downtrodden peoples came to be assured of God’s love and presence. Living in the light of this new worldview gave them joy, dignity, purpose and hope.
On the other hand, Burma’s Bama Buddhists resisted Christianity because, just like India’s high caste Hindus, they saw Christianity as a threat to their assumed superiority, inherited privilege, and incontestable power.
In 1885, the British annexed Burma into British-administered India, introduced democracy and capitalism, and improved the human rights situation for the ethnic minorities.
In 1937, Britain separated mostly Buddhist Burma from mostly Hindu India and established it as a crown colony.
In 1942, during World War II, Japan invaded and occupied Burma with help from the Japanese-trained Burma Independence Army.
In 1945, at the end of the war, Britain liberated Burma from Japanese occupation with help from the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), led by Aung San.
After World War II, General Aung Sun (father of Aung Sun Suu Kyi) united the ethnic nations – which were promised autonomy – and founded the Union of Burma. He then headed a parliamentary democracy and negotiated independence from Britain, before being assassinated in July 1947.
In 1948, Burma became independent with U Nu as prime minister.
While profound ethnic and religious differences made the Union fragile, and infighting left the government weak, the Bama-Buddhist Burmese military grew strong and rich. After independence, while the nation was still young, Burmese military units were required to raise a significant amount of their own revenue to pay salaries and equip themselves. What started out as a necessity, came to be the mean by which the Tatmadaw (military) came to dominate Burma’s economy.
Full report:
Economic interests of the Myanmar military (110 pages)
by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar
UN Human Rights Council, 16 Sept 2019.
On 2 March 1962, Army Chief of Staff, Ne Win staged a coup d’état and declared himself head of state. Blending Marxism, ethnic (Bama)- and religious (Buddhist)-supremacism, and Buddhist superstition, Ne Win advanced a Soviet-style nationalisation which abolished the federal system and brought all elements of society under the control of the racist military junta.
Ever since then, the ethnic nations have been lobbying – and in many cases fighting – for autonomy, as was promised by General Aung Sun. They are resisting the return of the old order – that of brutal Bama-Buddhist domination, exploitation, repression, crippling discrimination, and violent persecution.
Burma’s Bama-Buddhist, deeply-invested military regards this resistance as grounds for war.
ON THE FENCE
Geostrategic Burma: between East and West
For decades the West used sanctions to pressure Burma’s military junta.
Then, from 1988, a rising and ambitious China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, recognised Burma’s geo-strategic value – particularly its ability to provide China with access to the Indian Ocean – and took the opportunity to draw the isolated junta into its embrace.
Since the turn of the century, Burma’s geo-strategic value has increased in line with China’s rise.
Domestically though, Burma’s growing dependence on China (a long-time foe) triggered a rise in anti-China sentiment, especially amongst Burma’s military elite.
Aware of Burma’s geo-strategic value, the junta moved to extricate itself from China’s embrace, and reached out to the West. By 2012, in exchange for a series of reforms, Burma-US relations were restored.
Unfortunately, most of the junta’s reforms were less than satisfactory and even bogus.
However, it was not in the West’s economic or geo-strategic interests to advocate for ethnic minority victims of violent persecution and ethnic cleansing when Burma had just opened its resources and markets to the West. To protect its own interests, and ensure Burma did not drift back into China’s sphere of influence, the West turned a blind eye to the Tatmadaw’s corruption, human rights abuses, and military aggression.
2008 CONSTITUTION
To shore up its position ahead of “reforms”, Western engagement, greater openness, and a return to democracy, the junta had a new Constitution prepared.
Written under military rule, the 2008 Constitution serves military interests by ensuring the heavily invested Tatmadaw remains in control.
The 2008 Constitution enshrines centralised government contrary to the aspirations of Burma’s long-repressed, persecuted and brutalised ethnic nations, to which most of Burma’s Christians belong.
The 2008 Constitution is an obstacle to peace. Consider just a few articles:
Article 6: “The Union’s consistent objectives are: (f) enabling the Defence Services to be able to participate in the National political leadership role of the State.”
[NOTE: “The Union” is short for the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (the state’s official name).]
Article 37(a): “The Union is the ultimate owner of all lands and all natural resources above and below the ground, above and beneath the water and in the atmosphere in the Union.”
Though the government grants farmers tillage rights, it can grab land back whenever it wants. Consequently, struggles have long raged between the central government – which is desperate for resources (water, timber, gold, jade, amber, and fertile land for opium production) and foreign investment – and indigenous ethnic nations who would rather die fighting than surrender their ancestral lands.
Article 109 mandates that one quarter of all seats in the Pyithu Hluttaw (lower house of parliament) – that is 110 of 440 seats – shall be “Defence Services personnel nominated by the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Services”.
[NOTE: the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), registered in 2010, serves as a front for the military, and serves its interests.]
This effectively gives the military the power to veto any constitutional change.
The 2008 Constitution also contains “exception clauses” that give the military the legal right to deprive people of fundamental human rights and even orchestrate a military coup if the military deems it necessary for the purpose of safeguarding the Constitution.
Article 20 (f): “The Defence Services is mainly responsible for safeguarding the Constitution.”
ELECTIONS
In November 2010, Burma held its first parliamentary election in 20 years. It was the first election since the 1990 election which the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi (already under house arrest), won in a landslide (winning 392 out of the 492 seats) only to have the results annulled.
With its leader still under house arrest, the NLD boycotted the 2010 polls. The USDP won 259 of 325 seats (5 seats were cancelled); giving the military and its proxy 369 of 440 seats (i.e. 84 percent).
Critically, the junta had made disarmament a condition of participation in the Nov 2010 elections. It was a shrewd strategy designed to disenfranchise the ethnic minorities who, despite having signed ceasefire agreements with the junta, were unwilling to have their defence forces disarmed and absorbed into a national Border Guard Force (BGF). The issue was trust! These long-persecuted ethnic minorities were simply not willing to entrust their security to a centrally controlled force dominated by the same Bama-Buddhist soldiers that had spent decades indiscriminately grabbing their land and enslaving, looting, raping, torturing and massacring their people.
Many suspect the “democratic” exercise was merely a ploy to legitimise the junta so it could label the ethnic-religious minorities as “separatists” and “insurgents” and claim a mandate to subjugate them by force.
One week after the polls, with the military’s power established, the regime released Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
By mid-2011, the junta had resumed its war of ethnic cleansing against the mostly Christian Kachin, specifically in the vicinity of the proposed Myitsone Dam project – a Chinese financed Sino-Myanmar joint venture to build multiple dams along the Irrawaddy River in Kachin State. At the headwaters of the Irrawaddy, the Myitsone mega-dam would produce hydroelectricity, 90 percent of which would go to China. The project necessitates that Kachin villagers be forcibly relocated away from their villages and arable ancestral lands.
In the by-elections of 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in the parliament.
In the general election of 2015, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won an absolute majority of seats (255 of 330 elected seats to the military-backed USDP’s 30). The writing was on the wall!
While the government was reluctant to directly or decisively target the interests of the military, it did make efforts to de-militarise the country, tackle corruption, and address military domination of the economy.
On 19 February 2019 the parliament approved the creation of a 45-member joint committee tasked with writing a bill to amend the 2008 Constitution. As would be expected, the military and its proxy in parliament – the Union Solidarity and Development Party – strongly opposed the move. According to a report in the Irrawaddy, the proposed 168 amendments deal mostly with issues around reducing the power of the military and of the president, and decentralising state power to grant the ethnic nations more autonomy. It was a bold and hopeful but incredibly risky move.
In the general elections of 8 November 2020 – which international observers deemed free and fair and a “democratic success” – the National League for Democracy (NLD) increased their absolute majority, winning 258 of 330 elected seats to the military-backed USDP’s 26.
Consequently, despite being guaranteed 25 percent of seats (as mandated by the 2008 Constitution), the Tatmadaw was faced with the prospect that its days as the real power in Burma were coming to an end.
On 26 January 2021, in a press conference in the capital Naypyitaw, military spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun claimed the polls were marred by irregularities and fraud.
On 1 February 2021, the Tatmadaw, led by military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power in military coup.
See:
Taking care of business: the coup in Myanmar is partly about protecting the economic interests of the military elite, by Htwe Htwe Thein, Associate professor, Curtin University, WA, Australia, 15 Feb 2021.
While the coup was essentially all about power and money, the consequences for Burma’s ethnic minority nations – particularly the Karen, Karenni, Kachin and Chin, who would now go on to lead the fight for an ethnically and religiously plural, free, and democratic Burma – would be profound.
Analysis:
Military Coup Leaves Burma’s Christian Peoples Gravely Imperilled
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 2 March 2021
Recommended source:
Asia Times online / Myanmar
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
In July 2013, the Organisation for Protection of National Race and Religion (OPNRR), headed by Ashin Tilawka Biwuntha, a member of the government/junta appointed National Head Monks Committee, presented a petition to Burma’s President Thein Sein calling for legislation to protect national race (Bama) and religion (Buddhist).
At the time it was submitted, the petition had 1.3 million signatures. By March 2014, it had gathered a further three million supporters.
On 7 March 2014, Thein Sein ordered his twelve-member Presidential Commission to draft a law – essentially a package of four laws – that would: (1) ban polygamy; (2) ban conversion to another religion; (3) regulate interfaith marriage; and (4) restrict Muslim families to two children.
On 21 August 2015, Burma’s parliament passed the Religious Conversion Law designed to stop people leaving Buddhism. Anyone wanting to convert must apply to a board for a certificate of conversion, risking a two-year jail sentence in the process. Created to “protect” the majority religion, Burma’s Religious Conversion Law mirrors anti-conversion laws now common across Asia.
Analysis:
Burma (Myanmar): proposed Religious Conversion Law
By Elizabeth Kendal, 2 July 2014
In July 2015, Burma’s parliament passed the Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage bill. Denied freedom to convert, Buddhist women will now be constrained by law to marry a Buddhist man. Non-Buddhist men will have to convert to Buddhism to marry a Buddhist woman. A non-Buddhist man who marries a Buddhist woman contrary to the law is liable to 10 years in prison.
The law is essentially a Bama-Buddhist version of Islamic Sharia marriage law.
The ban on interfaith marriage was proposed specifically to stop Muslim men from targeting Buddhist women for conversion and marriage into Islam. This is something that occurs widely in the Muslim world – especially in Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria – and is routinely predatory in nature.
However, Burma’s ban on interfaith marriage violates Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Article 16 (a) which states: “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.”
In this, Bama Buddhist women are doubly targeted; for they may neither freely convert to Christianity, nor marry a Christian man.
Recommended news sources reporting Christian persecution in Burma/Myanmar:
- Christian Solidarity Worldwide https://www.csw.org.uk
- Free Burma Rangers http://www.freeburmarangers.org
- Morning Star News, https://morningstarnews.org
- Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com/
Indochina: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were all once part of French Indochina; consequently, their histories are bound together. The scars caused by French occupation, Japanese occupation, two Indochina Wars, and Communist terror, run deep.
Christianity first came to the region via Catholic missionaries (from 1624) and then Protestants (from the early 1800s). Conversions to Christianity escalated markedly from the 1960s, as the peoples of the region gained access to Gospel radio and scriptures translated into local languages.
In 1979, Soviet-backed Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and overthrew the China-backed Khmer Rouge which had been leading cross-border raids into Vietnam. Many members of the Khmer Rouge fled, either into exile or into hiding in Cambodia’s rural periphery. Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia for a decade (1979-1989), during which time Cambodia was essentially administered as a colony of Vietnam.
In the 1990s, Cambodia began a transition to democracy. While elections were held in 1993 and a democratic constitution adopted, Cambodia’s democracy remains a work in progress beset with challenges.
To this day, Laos and Vietnam continue as one-party states under Communist rule.
In Cambodia, improvements in religious freedom have been warmly welcomed, especially considering the Church was almost annihilated in the Khmer Rouge’s “killing fields”. However, real religious freedom is still a long way off. That said, despite repressive legislation, active persecution of Christians – who comprise around 3.1 percent of the population, with an annual growth rate of 8.4 percent – is minimal.
See: 2020 Report on International Religious Freedom: Cambodia
U.S. Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, 12 May 2021
The same cannot be said for Laos or Vietnam, where systematic discrimination and violent persecution is simultaneously racial, religious, political and pervasive.
LAOS
Laos is home to at least 134 distinct ethnic groups. Ruled by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party since 1975, it is one of the most repressive countries in the world. The regime controls the media and severely represses freedom of expression. Assembly, association and religion are also subject to heavy restrictions.
Officially, around 66.8 percent of Laotians practice Buddhism, while some 34 percent are ethnoreligionists who practice traditional animism and/or ancestor worship. While most official sources put the Christian population at 1.5 percent (mostly Protestant), Christian anthropologists put the figure at 3.4 percent, with an annual growth rate of 5.7 percent, with growth occurring in Protestant and Independent denominations.
Since the 1960s there have been several mass turnings to Christ amongst the Hmong and the Khmu, sometimes with whole villages coming to Christ, mostly in response to Gospel radio. Today, indigenous evangelists spread the Good News, of salvation and liberty through Jesus Christ, albeit at great personal risk and amidst great persecution; many have been arrested and tortured.
Through the 1960s the Hmong fought with the Americans against the Communists in the 2nd Indochina War (Vietnam War). And when the war was over, the Americans went home. Persecution has escalated markedly after the Communists took power in 1975.
For decades the Hmong waged a low-level guerrilla insurgency against the Communist government. Consequently, the Hmong are considered enemies of the state and a channel/backdoor for Western influence and subversion.
Further to this, the regime deems Christianity an “imperialist foreign religion” backed by political interests in the West, particularly the United States. Many thousands of Hmong have fled as refugees to the US.
Through the late 1990s, the Communist regime forced Christians to sign a “voluntary renunciation of foreign religion” document. Those who refused, were jailed and tortured.
In 2002-2003, reports leaked out that the regime was using chemical weapons against the Hmong. The “yellow rain” made people ill and poisoned everything resulting in severe food shortages.
Laos is a very poor country, and US sanctions have been effective in forcing the regime to modify its behaviour. But while the situation has improved in recent years, Laos is still one of the most difficult places to be a Christian.
Persecution
The degree to which Christians are violent persecuted, and repressive measures enforced, varies from place to place depending on the personal attitudes and inclinations of local authorities.
The most severe persecution tends to occur in rural and remote areas, in small towns and villages where the intimacy of village life makes it virtually impossible to be a secret believer.
While Buddhist clerics persecute Christians over the issue of conversions (which robs them of their influence), ethnoreligionists/animists persecute Christians out of fear.
The life of an ethnoreligionist/animist revolves around their relationship with the spirit world. To avoid hardship caused by (for example) disease, flood, or crop failure, ethnoreligionists perpetually offer sacrifices and perform rituals to appease belligerent spirits.
Understandably, ethnoreligionists view Christians who do not participate in animist rituals or ancestor worship as a threat to their lives and livelihoods.
To appease the spirits and avoid disasters, villagers pressure Christians to recant their faith and return to traditional religion. When that fails, ethnoreligionists feel they have no other option but to drive the Christians from the village. By this means, Christians are deprived of their traditional lands, and rendered homeless and destitute.
Inherently hostile to Christianity, the Communist Party has no interest in defending the fundamental human rights of Christians, or of assisting them in any way. Indeed, the Communist Party of Laos will not interfere with any process that advances its once-stated goal of eliminating Christianity. The impunity ensures the persecution will continue, while the ruling regime maintains deniability.
The Decree on Management and Protection of Religious Activities (2016) – also known as Decree 315 – obliges religious groups to obtain permission, at multiple levels, for most religious activities, including conversions/baptisms, evangelism, and routine church activities. Approval authority mainly rests with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) and its related counterparts at the district/municipal and provincial levels.
As the USCIRF observes, the language of Decree 315 is “vague and open to multiple interpretations, often emboldening local authorities to implement the spirit of the decree as they understand it rather than according to the law.”
Decree 315 also warns religious organisations against disturbing the social order or disrupting national harmony. And so it is that a law that is supposed to protect (or regulate) religion and belief, doubles as a weapon which can be used against any dissenting or “problematic” religious person or group.
While some improvements have been made, the USCIRF maintains, “Decree 315 does not fully comply with international human rights standards…
“The decree authorizes MOHA to regulate virtually all aspects of religious life. MOHA approval is technically required to assemble for religious purposes, construct new houses of worship, modify existing facilities, or establish new congregations in districts or villages that previously had none. In addition, MOHA offices have authority to restrict religious activities that they perceive to be at odds with local customs, national policies, national stability, the environment, or unity between religious and ethnic groups. Decree 315 delegates to MOHA the authority to oversee the process to approve religious organizations. This process theoretically provides opportunities for faith communities to not only enjoy legal protections once registered, but also to own property and operate legally – which they cannot do unless officially registered. However, Decree 315 places restrictions even on officially recognized religious groups through vaguely worded statements. Under Article 28, MOHA can arbitrarily approve and revoke approval of any faith group that operates in multiple provinces. Under the decree, the government has a proactive role in determining the internal operation and theological positions of faith communities…”
See: Country Update, Laos, USCIRF (May 2020).
Christians are urged to register with the either the Communist Party approved Lao Evangelical Church, the Catholic Church or the Seventh Day Adventist Church. But because registration results in loss of independence, many groups prefer to meet for prayer, worship, and Bible study in unregistered house fellowships despite the risk.
Lao Christians are routinely harassed and persecuted, including by means of arbitrary arrest. In recent years, pastors – both male and female – have been imprisoned for as little as praying for the sick.
Today the regime boasts freedom of religion, but claims it needs to reign in “problematic religions” and those who “abuse” religious freedom to cause problems in society.
While it is true that Christians no longer face long term imprisonment with torture for merely “believing in the Jesus religion” (as was the case in previous decades), incidents of harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and persecution remain pervasive and will continue so long there is impunity.
Laos’ Christians demonstrably just want to live peaceably as followers of Jesus Christ. They want to be able to gather for prayer, worship, and Bible study free of persecution. They do not want to be forced to renounce their faith, or to participate in Buddhist or ethnoreligious/animist rituals that violate their conscience.
Moreover, Laos’ Christians want to be able to exercise their faith through service to the community as good neighbours and good citizens. Inherent in this is a desire to share their faith – that is, to tell others how Jesus Christ has brought joy, freedom, and peace into their lives. They want to be free to share the wisdom of God as found in the scriptures; wisdom that has transformed their lives for the better. This is both a Biblical mandate from a God who cares for all people and nations, and a desire that burns in the heart of all true Christians.
VIETNAM
According to the Vietnam’s Communist Party-ruled government, Christians comprise 6.8 percent of the population. However, according to the ethnographers at Operation World (2010), Vietnamese Christians comprise 9.43 percent of the population (Catholics 7.69 percent; Protestants 1.28 percent; plus independents).
Vietnam’s oppressed and downtrodden have long looked to and depended on the Church for aid and assistance, for despite their minority status, Vietnamese Christians are massively over-represented in the charity sector, and amongst the county’s social justice, pro-democracy and human rights advocates and activists. Catholics – including many priests – are especially active in the fields of charity and social justice. Protestants – including many pastors – are especially active in the fields of pro-democracy and human rights education and advocacy.
Underpinning the Church’s risky and courageous response is the Biblical / Judeo-Christian worldview which dignifies human beings as individuals created by God in the image of God; individuals who must be free to seek, find, know and worship God, including through service.
This worldview, with its emphasis on human dignity and individual liberty, underpins the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It also sets all who live by it on a collision course with every cruel and repressive, corrupt and self-serving, totalitarian dictator and regime – and that includes the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Religious Freedom
US officials have long held the view that poor human rights are intrinsically linked to poverty and poor living standards, despite this being manifestly false and an insult to the poor. The consequences of this errant assumption and the tragic policy it elicits is clearly on display in Vietnam.
In 2006, the US government removed Vietnam from its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) confident that Vietnam’s economic growth would inevitably lead to improvements in human rights. This flawed thinking paved the way for the US to accept the Communist Party’s token measures and verbal assurances that they would reform human rights as Vietnam received ever more privileges. The Vietnamese Communist Party knew well how to play the game; it did what it had to do in order to get from the US what it wanted to get. But behind the facade, Vietnamese government remained a repressive, Communist regime.
Two months after it removed Vietnam from its CPC list, the US granted Vietnam permanent normal trade status, which led to Vietnam’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January 2007.
As soon as Vietnam joined the WTO, repression and persecution returned.
On 6 March 2007, evangelical Protestant Human Rights lawyer and religious freedom advocate Nguyen Van Dai was arrested as the regime cracked down on pro-democracy and human rights activists across the board.
“Through a wave of harassments, arrests and criminal charges against human rights and democracy advocates engaged in peaceful and perfectly legal activities, Vietnam is openly showing its hand and waiting to see if anyone will challenge, or if everyone will fold.”
See: Vietnam’s crackdown creates watershed
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 20 March 2007
By September 2008, Vietnam was right back to its old ways: breaking promises and using state violence to crack down hard on Hanoi’s Catholics as they followed the courageous Archbishop Kiet into the streets, week after week, to pray for religious freedom and the return of their confiscated properties in the largest public demonstrations since the Communists came to power.
See: Vietnam: Govt belligerence escalates against Hanoi Catholics.
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 26 September 2008
Also: Vietnam: Sharp backsliding in religious freedom
Human Rights Watch (HRW), 10 Oct 2009
Persecution in Vietnam’s Central Highlands also skyrocketed.
The HRW report – Montagnard Christians in Vietnam: a case study in religious repression (March 2011) – revealed a campaign of widespread systematic harassment, violence, and public shaming through which many hundreds, if not thousands, of Protestant families were forced to recant their faith.
23 May 2016: US President Obama lifted the decades-long embargo on selling lethal weapons to Vietnam, without requiring any concessions in return. [Previously, Vietnam had purchased the bulk of its weapons from Russia.] Persecution with impunity was now all but guaranteed.
1 January 2018: Vietnam’s new Law on Belief and Religion comes into effect. As the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) 2019 report explains: “The law nominally obliges the government to protect religious freedom and, for the first time, gives Vietnamese religious organisations a right to legal personhood. However, it also requires religious groups to register with the Government Committee for Religious Affairs (GCRA) and to report on routine activities like festivals and conferences. Article 5 grants the government discretion to reject religious activities that ‘infringe upon national security’ and ‘violate social morality’. The implementing regulations, which came into force in June 2018, impose fines on organizations deemed to abuse ‘religion to infringe upon the interests of the state or engage in fabrication or slander’.”
See: Assessment of Vietnam’s Law on Belief and Religion, USCIRF.
Ethnic Minorities
Vietnam’s ethnic minority Montagnard/Degar tribes of the Central Highlands face “especially egregious persecution for the peaceful practice of their religious beliefs, including physical assault, detention, or banishment” (USCIRF).
An estimated 10,000 Protestant Hmong and Montagnard Christians in the Central Highlands continue to be stateless because local authorities refused to issue ID cards, household registration, and birth certificates, in many instances in retaliation for refusing to renounce their faith.
Christians are at risk not only from communist officials and police, but from violent gangs and “Red Flag” militant groups that will violently assault and persecute Christians at the behest of local authorities.
The Vietnamese government continues to hold more than 130 prisoners of conscience, many of whom are Catholic and Protestant bloggers, teachers and pro-democracy and religious liberty activists. There is evidence that these prisoners are being tortured and otherwise ill-treated, held incommunicado and in solitary confinement, kept in squalid conditions, beaten, choked and forcibly medicated, while being denied proper medical care, clean water and fresh air.
In July 2021, the US Department of State and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) unanimously voiced concern about the government’s persecution of ethnic minority Protestants in Dak Lak Province. The Central Highlands provinces of Dak Lak, Gia Lai and Phu Yen have long been a hot-bed of repressive and violent persecution of ethnic minority Protestant Christians, who are, without justification, routinely accused of supporting or participating in the long-extinct FULRO insurgency. [FULRO: United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races.]
Despised and presumed guilty, ethnic minority Protestant Christians are routinely treated as subversives and separatists. Persecution includes intimidation, harassment and threats, and Cultural Revolution-style kangaroo courts where believers are publicly shamed and pressured to “confess their crimes” and renounce their faith.
State run media routinely accuses ethnic minority Protestants of exploiting religion for personal gain, abusing religious freedom to break the law, and/or of “colluding with hostile forces with the purpose of inciting public disorder and acting against the Communist Party and State.” [US Dept of State 2020 report].
See: US Commission on International Religious Freedom
2021 Annual Report - Vietnam Chapter (in English and Vietnamese)
Vietnam has essentially “gone dark”.
In recent years, laws against “undermining the unity policy” and “spreading anti-state propaganda”; along with Vietnam’s revised national security laws (enacted January 2018) and its new Cyber Security Law (enacted January 2019), have made getting information out of Vietnam a very risky business indeed.
The Vietnam Human Rights Network’s 2020-2021 report lists 288 prisoners of conscience, 39 of whom are ethnic minority Protestants (see link below). Meanwhile, the Campaign to Abolish Torture in Vietnam lists 79 “Montagnard Prisoners of Conscience Serving Prison Sentences and House Arrest Amounting to Eight or More Years.”
This shocking list illustrates the brutality of persecution in Vietnam and the way in which injustice is meted out with impunity.
Recommended:
Vietnam Human Rights Network
Report on Human Rights in Vietnam, 2020-2021 (Religious Freedom: pages 47 through 58).
Includes: List of Prisoners of Conscience Currently in Jail (pages 91 to 100); plus profile of Nguyen Nang Tinh, whose peaceful advocacy the VHRN has recognised with the Vietnam Human Rights Award 2020 (page 104).
As in China and many other unfree states, repression and persecution do not arise from poverty, but from worldview, and an obscene determination to retain power at any cost.