Activists and Western governments are turning up the heat on Vietnamese
authorities ahead of the trial of a dissident monk whose apparent abduction
while traveling abroad has tested the limits of Hanoi's self-proclaimed
religious tolerance.
Buddhist groups claim that Thich Tri Luc was kidnapped by secret police in
Cambodia in July and bundled back across the border to silence his outspoken
human-rights views, even though he had refugee status.
Thich Tri Luc's trial was originally scheduled for August 1, but the hearing
was postponed after a clamor of protest from the European Commission,
human-rights activists and the United Nations, which earlier brought the monk
under its official protection. The trial is now expected to commence by the end
of October, and will probably be conducted under internal-security laws in a
closed court. Thich Tri Luc faces a jail term ranging from three years to life
if he is convicted.
In an effort to strengthen religious tolerance, prominent Buddhist leader Thich
Quang Do stepped up pressure on political authorities this week by appealing
directly to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to stop harassing the Unified Buddhist
Church of Vietnam (UBCV), which has been banned since 1981. In a rare display
of criticism against the ruling Communist Party, Thich Quang Do, 75, implied
that Phan Van Khai had reneged on pledges made earlier in the year for a more
liberal attitude toward religion.
"Your frank declarations gave Buddhists the hope that we might at last
begin to heal the wounds inflicted upon our community throughout years of
unceasing repression, not only since reunification [in 1975], but also when our
country was partitioned" into North and South Vietnam, he said. Instead,
believers had been subjected to "grave violations of human rights and
democratic freedoms ... [including] interrogations, harassment and
intimidation".
Thich Quang Do and Thich Tri Luc - whose secular name is Pham Van Tuong - are
the public faces of a movement that has created a dilemma for Hanoi as it
strives to present a more humane image abroad while maintaining the political
status quo at home.
Vietnam's 30 million Buddhists and 7 million Christians do not threaten the
party's grasp on power; they are splintered, have limited access to finances
and are not usually viewed as militant. Hanoi contends that 22,000 temples,
churches and other religious venues have been allowed to operate openly
throughout the country with a minimum of supervision, attracting crowds as
large as 200,000 for festivals. Two years ago the communist state actually
lifted a ban on the activities of Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam
(SECV), a Protestant grouping.
The sting is that this massive community has been used, according to the
Government Religious Board, to galvanize support for human-rights positions and
even lobby for increased democratization. As a result, hundreds of monks and
priests have been detained during the past decade under Article 91 of the
Criminal Code for allegedly trying to "contact outside organizations in
order to undermine the Vietnamese government".
Thich Tri Luc was first placed under "pagoda arrest" during a
government crackdown in 1992 after the UBCV protested against the treatment of
Buddhists and called on the state to respect religious freedom, according to
Amnesty International (AI).
He was detained again in November 1994 for assisting a flood relief effort in
the Mekong Delta that used sandbags printed with the UBCV logo, serving 30
months in prison and a subsequent five years under house arrest.
Required to report monthly to the security police, restricted from traveling,
forced out of the pagoda where he lived and deprived of a range of other
personal rights, Thich Tri Luc fled to Cambodia in April of this year seeking
political asylum.
Police said he was stopped at the border while trying to "undermine the
government"; but the UBCV claims he was taken from a guesthouse in Phnom
Penh and forced to return to Hanoi, despite being under the care of the United
Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"It became clear to me that there was no way for me to continue living in
Vietnam. My rights and daily way of living were being trampled by the
authorities. Please help a member of the Buddhist church who has just escaped
from Vietnam's harsh yoke," Thich Tri Luc wrote in a letter to New
York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) when he was in Phnom Penh.
Prior to Thich Tri Luc's arrest, Thich Quang Do, the deputy leader of the UBCV
and Vietnam's most famous dissident, was placed under "probationary
detention" in June 2001 for launching an "Appeal for Democracy in
Vietnam", but restrictions were lifted in June. In April he helped arrange
the landmark meeting between Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and Venerable Thich
Huyen Quang, 86, the patriarch of the UBCV, who has been held under house
arrest without trial for more than 20 years.
According to the UBCV's version of the meeting, which is accepted by Western
diplomats, Phan Van Khai acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the
handling of the religious issue and gave an undertaking to ease state controls.
"There were some subtle improvements in treatment of religious dissidents
after the Khai meeting, though I would have to say that the Pham Van Tuong [Tri
Luc] incident could not have come at a more unfortunate time," said a
European diplomat. "I think the message from the Khai session was that
Vietnam regards the religious issue as an annoying distraction and is happy to
leave the monks to their own devices as long as they keep their noses clean of
politics."
But the US State Department noted in its latest International Religious Freedom
Report that most restrictions were being retained, because "the Communist
Party fears that not only organized religion but any organized group outside
its control or supervision may weaken its authority and influence".
The report said the authorities mistrusted small non-conformist religious
sects, especially those involving ethnic minorities such as the highland
Montagnard Protestants, because they had evolved into social lobbying groups.
"Many of these Protestant ethnic minorities ... were not protesting for
religious reasons, but rather were protesting against the loss of traditional
homelands to recent migrants, mostly ethnic Vietnamese, and abusive police
treatment in the provinces," the department noted.
Washington has officially protested at Hanoi's refusal to recognize the refugee
status of Thich Tri Luc, while liberal members of the European Commission are
pressing for a halt in the EC's aid to Vietnam until he is released.
But some Vietnamese observers believe that Phan Van Khai's more liberal stance
is not supported by the hardline security branch, which has sought to remove
potential risks by herding Buddhists into one tightly regulated congregation.
In mid-September, police brutally broke up a UBCV rally in Binh Dinh province,
where patriarch Thich Huyen Quang is under detention, apparently with the aim
of preventing contact with the supreme leader.
While some prominent dissidents have been released from house arrest or given
more lenient terms, there has been no evident change in the number of
Vietnamese being held for alleged violations of religious decrees - believed to
be between 40 and 50.
"I don't think we are going to see any real loosening up as long as
religion is treated as a political rather than a human-rights issue," said
another diplomat.
"[But] a tough sentence for Tri Luc could send the wrong message, for they
have to be careful that the Tri Luc affair doesn't blow up in their faces by
providing a martyr to the cause."