HANOI - Communist Vietnam formally recognised a southern branch of the Protestant Evangelical Church on Tuesday, making it a legal entity for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, a church official said.
However, the official of the Evangelical Church said the legal status granted at a ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City would cover only about 300 individual churches, whose congregations represent just a fraction of Vietnam's 800,000-one million Protestants.
The official, who did not want to be identified, said about 2,000 Protestants attended the ceremony at which government approval was announced for a church charter and a 23-member executive board chosen by church members.
"The head of the (government's) Bureau of Religious Affairs Le Quang Vinh read out the decision this morning," he said.
Protestants and diplomats have praised the legitimisation process as a modest concession after years of repression, but caution that most Protestants will not be covered.
Among those excluded will be the majority of ethnic minority protestants in the Central Highlands region driven to worship underground by intolerant local authorities.
ETHNIC PROTESTS
Many minority Protestants took part in widespread ethnic protests in February, the worst unrest to hit Vietnam for years.
"'Legal recognition' might, in the minds of the authorities, include a maximum of 200,000 of nearly 1,000,000 Evangelicals," said a foreign observer of Vietnam's religious scene.
On Monday, a Western diplomat said the figure could be as low as 25,000.
The Church official said the 300 congregations ranged from at least 100 to several thousand people. He said the churches were mainly in Ho Chi Minh City, the southern province of Ca Mau and the central provinces of Quang Tri and Quang Ngai.
Most minority Christians will still have to worship at illegal "house churches," which have only tenuous links to such lowland congregations.
The foreign observer said there was a danger the law granting recognition could be used as a basis for preventing people meeting to worship in their homes.
He said the test of the government's sincerity would come when it became clear how much freedom the church would have to train clergy, build and repair church buildings, and make contact with international Christian bodies.
"The weight of leadership on the ECVN (south) will be very great," he said. "It will be the de facto spokesperson for the entire Protestant community, including the unregistered house churches and the marginalised minority churches."
Only six religious groups are officially recognised in Vietnam, including the smaller northern branch of the Evangelical Church, which consists of only about 11 congregations.
The United States, which has still to ratify a landmark trade deal signed with Hanoi last year, has been pushing for greater religious freedoms, not least for the Protestants, who first became established in Vietnam due to American missionaries.
Recent incidents calling into question Hanoi's commitment to this have raised concerns about ratification of the pact. Most analysts expect it to go through eventually, but say it could be delayed by rights issues.
05:22 04-03-01
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