US embassy cable - 03HOCHIMINHCITY1093

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 HO CHI MINH CITY 001093 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/BCLTV, DRL 
 
E. O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, PGOV, PREF, PREL, SOCI, KIRF, VM, HUMANR, RELFREE 
SUBJECT: MIXED PICTURE ON HOUSE CHURCHES IN AMBASSADOR HANFORD'S 
MEETINGS WITH HCMC PROTESTANTS 
 
REF:  A) HCMC 0766  B) HCMC 0836  C) HCMC 0933 
 
1. (SBU) Summary:  In meetings with several Protestant house 
church pastors and "victims" of religious oppression during his 
visit to HCMC, Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom John 
Hanford heard several credible-sounding reports of arrests, 
beatings, forced renunciations, and church closures.  Other 
reports seemed less credible, or were based more on secondhand 
information.  ConGen had arranged for three sessions with local 
contacts in the Protestant community to give various informal 
groupings and denominations equal time.  Unfortunately, one group 
inexplicably sent their "victims" back to the Central Highlands 
the night before the meeting, saying they had not been able to 
contact the local HCMC pastor who was assisting with arrangements. 
Septels report on Ambassador Hanford's official meetings in HCMC 
and Hanoi, and his trip to the Central Highlands.  End summary. 
 
2. (SBU) The first individual in group one was an ethnic minority 
woman who claimed to have been persecuted for many years with her 
husband in Kon Tum Province because their house had been used as a 
meeting place for Protestant worship.  Her allegations of abuse 
included at least two beatings by police, and several close 
escapes after being warned by friends.  (The HCMC pastor who had 
invited her to the meeting and was present throughout her 
testimony told  Ambassador Hanford that he knew of another pastor 
who was beaten for visiting the couple in their village.)  While 
her husband had been beaten on the head, she said that all of her 
wounds were internal and left no scars.  She knew nothing of her 
husband's current condition, as they had been "forced to live 
apart" in Dong Nai Province (next door to HCMC), to avoid being 
picked up by security agents.  Local officials had also "told" 
them to renounce their faith, on the grounds that they were the 
only Protestants in a village of Catholics. 
 
3. (SBU) As the story emerged, it was clarified that most of the 
hardships she and her husband had endured were at the hands of 
Catholic neighbors, although she believes the villagers acted on 
the instructions of local officials.  She and her husband were not 
"forced" to renounce their faith and never did.  She said she and 
her husband were actually living apart to make it less likely that 
they would be questioned for living in Dong Nai Province without 
residence permits (since Dong Nai is a haven for economic migrants 
looking for jobs), not because they believed the police were 
actively searching for them.  The HCMC pastor added that the 
police are always on the lookout for ethnic minorities in HCMC, 
and while she would be safer among her own people, her community 
would not accept her.  As to whether other Protestants in the 
Central Highlands suffered similar treatment, she did not know. 
She told Ambassador Hanford she would not be comfortable with him 
raising her case directly with the GVN, despite the fact that she 
was the subject of a written appeal to the international community 
listing the names of her local tormentors. 
 
4. (SBU) The second person invited by the same HCMC pastor was a 
young woman who claimed to have been expelled from a university in 
HCMC, along with three classmates, for sharing their faith back in 
2001.  (A total of 13 students had been implicated, but nine had 
already graduated.)  She said that she and a friend had been 
"sharing the gospel" by handing out pamphlets and talking to 
people in a park near her school back in 2000 when the police 
arrested her friend.  The friend spent the night in jail and was 
beaten by a drunken policeman.  The next day, police confiscated 
their religious materials.  When the police later gave the list of 
students involved in this "illegal activity" to the school in 
2001, the four remaining students were expelled.  The written 
documents this woman provided, which had already been given to 
Ambassador Hanford by a contact in Bangkok, charged the students 
with "disseminating religious materials."  (Note: It is illegal in 
Vietnam to proselytize.)  The former student is currently teaching 
English, but has yet to resume her studies for fear she will not 
be accepted by any university in Vietnam.  She, too, requested 
that Ambassador Hanford not use her name in discussions with the 
GVN.  The HCMC pastor told Ambassador Hanford that 42 students 
meeting for religious worship last year at Easter had been 
arrested, repeatedly questioned, and made to write confessions 
before they were expelled. 
 
5. (SBU) The last speaker in this first group was a pastor whose 
weekday worship service at a house church in HCMC's District 11 
earlier this year had deteriorated into a physical confrontation 
with police who were trying to check the identification cards of 
those present (ref A).  He too claimed to have been beaten, but 
only on the top of his head.  In the course of briefing Ambassador 
Hanford on the specific sequence of events, including his 
subsequent arrest, he volunteered that he had actually struck the 
first blow, punching a policemen in the face twice when he 
wouldn't allow him to leave the house in order to take his wife to 
the hospital. 
 
6. (SBU) In response to Ambassador Hanford's request for advice on 
designating Vietnam a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), the 
pastor leading the group warned that backing the GVN into a corner 
could make it retaliate.  At the same time, he said things could 
not possibly ever get as bad as they were 15 years ago, so 
Protestant leaders were not afraid.  He said the GVN had recently 
started using dangerous new methods that were difficult to detect. 
For example, security operatives had poisoned many Protestants, 
including some who had sought refuge in Cambodia.  They were never 
the same again mentally.  Some had died within a matter of months. 
He hoped that Ambassador Hanford would tell the GVN that the U.S. 
would only work with Vietnam if there was real religious freedom, 
including for house churches.  The GVN had closed many churches 
since 1975, and not allowed any of them to reopen.  Without real 
churches, believers had had no choice but to form house churches 
over the years.  Now they realized that registration with the GVN 
brought too many restrictions, like those faced by the government- 
recognized Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV). 
According to this pastor, house church pastors are in fact freer 
to move from place to place.  The pastor from District 11 echoed 
this sentiment, noting that the house church movement had trained 
thousands of pastors over the years without GVN permission, and 
those pastors are freer to lead their churches than the pastors 
belonging to the legal church. 
 
7. (SBU) Since what would have been the second group had sent its 
victims/witnesses back to the provinces, Ambassador Hanford met 
the third group at the home of a pastor who was once affiliated 
with the SECV, but later returned to the house church movement to 
gain greater independence.  During the nearly four-hour meeting in 
his home, he left for a couple hours to conduct a Sunday evening 
worship service in the church atop his downtown HCMC shop house. 
This pastor told Ambassador Hanford he was preparing a thick file 
outlining the difficulties faced by house churches and would send 
it to the GVN, selected foreign governments, and NGOs in early 
2004.  He cautioned that religious freedom meant more than just 
stopping persecution, however.  He looked forward to the day when 
Protestants could broadcast their messages freely over TV and 
radio, and preach openly on the sidewalks.  He presented 
Ambassador Hanford with six CD-ROMs detailing government abuses. 
He noted that since the GVN knows Protestant leaders can place 
documentary evidence on the Internet, government officials were 
relying more on oral communication to hide their tracks.  They had 
also adopted more cunning methods for dealing with dissent, such 
as letting other prisoners beat up religious prisoners in jail, 
rather than having government officials do the dirty work. 
 
8. (SBU) Also present at the pastor's home were several relatives 
of imprisoned Catholic Priest Nguyen Van Ly.  One relative, who 
has probably had the most contact with Father Ly since his 
imprisonment, suggested the cleric was being held in solitary 
confinement and slowly poisoned.  (Father Ly had told him once 
that prison staff often held food the family sent for several 
weeks, giving them ample time to tamper with it.)  The relative 
based his conclusion on the fact that Father Ly had seemed quite 
angry and "different" when he last visited him in June 2003. 
According to this relative, Father Ly called for his niece and 
nephews to confess their crimes (ref B) and talked about other 
"strange things", such as "seeing the Lord."  The relative was 
never allowed to be alone with Father Ly, and had only been 
permitted to stay 20 minutes the last time, as opposed to the 
usual hour.  The relative also believed the GVN was out to punish 
Father Ly's entire family for his outspokenness, although he 
acknowledged the two nephews currently in prison in HCMC had 
indeed communicated with people in the U.S. regarding Father Ly's 
case and tried to visit Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam leader 
Thich Huyen Quang.  He said some people in Hue had been paid the 
equivalent of USD$10 to make false statements about Father Ly and 
his family, including accounts that his niece, Mrs. Nguyen Thi 
Hoa, was involved in the drug trade.  Asked about the apparent 
reluctance of the Catholic Church to support the jailed priest, he 
responded that the Bishop of Father Ly's former diocese had 
demonstrated quiet support by failing to appoint a successor to 
his parish. 
 
9. (SBU) Another pastor in this third group, well-known for his 
involvement in organizing resistance to GVN oppression in the 
Protestant community, said the Communists were very "wicked," and 
employed "subtle" techniques to control the people.  Religious 
practice was only allowed up to a level where it could be 
controlled.  He accused an unnamed member of the SECV Council of 
Dignitaries of being a secret agent for the government.  He 
alleged that this individual had shaped the SECV Charter in order 
to allow for GVN control and had informed on many pastors.  This 
agent had also at one time been a member of a "killing team," 
which had killed people right before the pastor's very eyes some 
20 years ago.  The pastor described a new Communist Party of 
Vietnam (CPV) document, allegedly signed by Prime Minister Phan 
Van Khai, which called on officials to tighten up restrictions on 
religion by January 2004.  House churches would be forced to join 
the SECV so that the GVN could control their activities.  Churches 
which refused to follow CPV guidelines would not be allowed to 
register.  In his most startling statement of the evening, he said 
that while the government forced many Protestant to confess 
falsely to being followers of the Dega separatist movement, he 
estimated that fully 10 percent of all churches in the Central 
Highlands were Dega churches.  (Post Note: We say startling 
because in the past, the Dega separatist movement has always been 
described as small.) 
 
10. (SBU) This pastor brought several other individuals to meet 
with Ambassador Hanford, the first of whom was a young man whose 
father had been arrested two years ago.  The father was an ethnic 
Ede pastor in the Central Highlands who had disappeared without a 
trace after leaving for HCMC in the wake of the violent 
demonstrations that shook the region in early 2001.  While it was 
unclear whether or not he knew for sure that his father had been 
arrested, or where he was being held, the family had had no 
contact with the father since.  The father's church had about 200 
members at the time of the demonstrations, but is now meeting in 
smaller groups under the care of another pastor.  The son said he 
had heard of many forced renunciations and disappearances among 
the ethnic H'mong in the Northwest Highlands, but had no firsthand 
knowledge or specific information to share. 
 
11. (SBU) Two people from the small Protestant house church that 
was recently torn down in HCMC's Can Gio District (ref C) were 
also present.  They told Ambassador Hanford that while local 
officials had justified the destruction in the name of a public 
campaign to "restore public order in construction," this was 
really a ruse to target their church.  When police had come in the 
middle of a worship service and levied a fine for the illegal 
construction, the congregation had asked if they would be allowed 
to continue worshipping there if they paid.  When the police said 
no, they refused to pay.  Sometime later, the police returned to 
remove the structure.  The two members acknowledged that they had 
built their church without a construction permit, but pointed out 
that other structures leveled in the "public order" campaign were 
more than 300 meters away.  In addition, they said no one in that 
area ever obtained building permits.  In fact, they had 
specifically chosen to build their church in the middle of an 
isolated area to avoid attention, although they mounted a cross on 
the building's front. 
 
12. (SBU) In response to Ambassador Hanford's request for guidance 
on possible CPC designation, two other pastors present thought he 
should press for more legal international worship services and 
permission for foreign missionaries to preach.  Ambassador Hanford 
outlined his intention to push for release of prisoners, an end to 
forced renunciations, the reopening of closed churches, and 
official recognition for all churches that wanted to affiliate 
with the SECV.  The pastors from this third group noted that the 
SECV churches had given up their freedom when they registered, and 
that their very existence had given the GVN a reason to 
discriminate against the house churches.  They were certain they 
would never want to register with the GVN -- even if they could do 
so independently of the SECV.  They believe there are too many 
differences in doctrine for the many house churches in the Central 
Highlands to group themselves under a single organization.  They 
said their preferred, "most realistic option" would be to pressure 
the GVN to allow all churches in the Central Highlands to register 
independently, if they so desired. 
 
13. (SBU) Comment:  Overall, this very full day of meetings 
provided a wealth of information on current government 
restrictions on religious activity in southern Vietnam.  At the 
same time, the meetings revealed some of the problems inherent in 
relying on indirect sources.  Claims of poisonings, beatings, 
disappearances, and forced renunciations can be very compelling 
and emotional.  But the facts, when available, do not always 
support the claims, which therefore need to be backed up by solid 
evidence if they are to be credible when raised with our GVN 
interlocutors.  Speculation on GVN motives by those so far outside 
the prevailing system is also of limited utility.  Post notes 
these particular pastors have had several opportunities to present 
solid evidence to back up claims of recent abuses, and have in 
fact assured ConGenoffs the evidence was "in the mail", so to 
speak.  Mostly they have chosen to present secondhand reports of 
the same allegations that are carried in the reports of various 
NGOs.  Also worth noting is that most of the cases raised during 
these meetings were not current, and some cases were only 
tangentially related to freedom of religion.  Such cases can 
undermine our credibility when we seek to make our points on 
violations of religious freedom with the GVN. 
 
14.  (SBU)  While it seems that the situation is not as bleak as 
some groups suggest, it is also far from being as rosy as GVN 
officials often insist.  The GVN is highly suspicious of 
Protestant house churches in the Central Highlands, even when 
there may be no evidence that a specific church is affiliated with 
the Dega movement.  The GVN must do a far better job of educating 
and controlling local officials in order to prevent abuses.  For 
the most part, the GVN allows worship in registered churches, 
regardless of the denomination, and grants freedom of religion to 
individuals and family members living together to worship at home. 
For those groups who wish to gather without prior permission in 
house churches and other, less formal settings however, the 
situation remains unpredictable and difficult.  There is great 
variation in local practice, which may involve significant 
individual vulnerability, even in HCMC.  Any activity perceived as 
being a challenge to Communist Party rule, especially if linked to 
outside groups with a political agenda (such as recent meetings by 
the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam), is likely to cause a 
harsh reaction. 
15.  (U)  Ambassador Hanford did not have an opportunity to clear 
this cable prior to his departure. 
YAMAUCHI