US embassy cable - 04HOCHIMINHCITY1140

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 HO CHI MINH CITY 001140 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/BCLTV, DRL/IRF, DRL, PRM 
STATE PASS TO FRANK JANNUZI IN SFRC 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, SOCI, PREL, PGOV, KIRF, VM, HUMANR, ETMIN, RELFREE 
SUBJECT: STAFFDEL JANNUZI FOCUSES ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN 
VIETNAM'S CENTRAL HIGHLANDS 
 
REF:  a) Hanoi 2430; b) HCMC 789 
 
1. (SBU) Summary:  During a visit to the Central Highland Province 
of Pleiku September 2 to 4, Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
Staffer Jannuzi focused on religious freedom issues, particularly 
among the region's ethnic minorities.  The response of local GVN 
officials to Jannuzi's call for greater religious freedoms largely 
was a rehash of party rhetoric, although GVN officials did commit 
to working with local religious leaders and to "try to recognize" 
another five protestant churches by the end of 2004.  While 
acknowledging continued police harassment, a key protestant church 
leader told Jannuzi that he believed conditions for the Southern 
Evangelical Church of Vietnam -- the dominant Protestant 
organization in the area -- were gradually improving.  He noted 
that "political" activities by the "Dega" house church movement 
led to the unrest in the Central Highlands in April 2004 and 
continued to complicate SECV efforts to build cooperative links 
with local GVN authorities. Mr. Jannuzi's discussions on other 
minority rights issues will be reported septel.  (Note: at the 
invitation of the GVN, Michael Sullivan, a U.S. journalist baed in 
Hanoi for National Public Radio, accompanied the Staffdel 
throughout the visit to Pleiku.)  End Summary. 
 
Local Government offers little new 
---------------------------------- 
 
2. (SBU) Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Frank Jannuzi 
accompanied by HCMC PolOff visited Pleiku, administrative seat of 
the Central Highland province of Gia Lai September 2-4.  (Gia Lai 
was one of the epicenters of ethnic minority unrest in 2004 and 
2001.)  In Pleiku, Jannuzi met with Chairman of the Gia Lai 
People's Committee, the Deputy Director of the centrally 
administered Central Highlands Development Authority and the 
Provincial Committee for Religious Affairs (CRA).  Jannuzi 
emphasized that while the USG and U.S. Congress supported improved 
bilateral ties, the pace and depth of our relationship would 
suffer should the GVN not protect human rights.  In particular, 
restraints on the religious freedoms of the Highlands ethnic 
minorities were of growing concern to many in the United States. 
 
3. (SBU) The local GVN officials offered little that we hadn't 
heard before.  The GVN was committed to protect freedom of worship 
and belief but would not tolerate the use of religion as a pretext 
for anti-GVN political activity.  They repeated allegations that 
outside elements linked to now defunct "FULRO Movement" were using 
"Dega Protestantism" to spread insurrection among Montagnards (the 
catchall term for the Central Highland's ethnic minority groups). 
(FULRO was a Montagnard guerilla movement that continued to resist 
Hanoi's authority in the Central Highlands well after unification 
in 1975.  Many of its leaders served along U.S. forces in the 
Highlands during the Vietnam War.  FULRO formally ended its armed 
struggle in 1992.) 
 
4. (SBU) Somewhat more helpfully, Nguyen Thanh Cam, Deputy Chief 
of the Committee for Religious Affairs of Gia Lai, told Jannuzi 
that he had just approved applications for two new Protestant 
churches to be built in the province.  The approval process took 
one month, he claimed.  Thanh Cam told Jannuzi that he was going 
to meet "that afternoon" with leaders of the Southern Evangelical 
Church of Vietnam -- the province's leading protestant 
denomination -- to review mechanisms to ensure the smooth 
operation of their churches.  He also was hopeful that the 
committee would recognize up to five protestant congregations in 
the province by year-end.  (Comment:  overall, the local CRA 
official's comments were far less committal than his counterpart 
in Hanoi who told Jannuzi September 1 that seven new congregations 
would be recognized in Gia Lai province by the end of 2004 (ref 
a).) 
 
SECV: under pressure but positive 
--------------------------------- 
 
5. (SBU) In a two-hour private meeting with Staffdel, Pastor Siu Y 
Kim (strictly protect), head of the Southern Evangelical Church of 
Vietnam (SECV) in Gia Lai province, painted a picture of ongoing 
religious harassment from local authorities in the Highlands 
tempered by some positive steps toward cooperation and coexistence 
with the GVN.  According to Pastor Kim, of the roughly 100,000 
Protestants in Gia Lai province, 75,000 are affiliated with SECV 
churches.  15,000 belong to the 11 GVN-recognized churches in the 
province.  The other 60,000 worship in 89 different congregations 
with 474 "gathering points."  Of these 75,000 worshipers, only 
1,000 are ethnic Vietnamese "Kinh." 
 
6. (SBU) According to Kim, the unrecognized SECV churches face 
significant pressure from local authorities: they are under 
constant police surveillance.  The police, on occasion, disrupt 
prayer sessions and confiscate bibles.  While SECV members have 
been called into police stations for "informative interviews," 
none have been arrested thus far. 
 
7. (SBU) The need for additional pastors is acute, Kim said.  The 
15 GVN-sanctioned pastors are barely sufficient to minister to the 
needs of the 15,000 parishioners in the 11 recognized churches. 
He complained that the GVN continues to limit intake of 
seminarians -- SECV/Gia Lai requested that 44 individuals be 
granted permission to attend the SECV's seminary in Ho Chi Minh 
City, but only 20 were okayed.  As a result, the SECV in Gia Lai 
is training 200 ministers locally without GVN approval.  He held 
out the hope that, over time, he and local authorities would find 
a way to regularize their status. 
 
8. (SBU) The pastor said that he had not yet been informed 
directly of the provincial decision to approve two new churches, 
but welcomed it as a significant gesture nonetheless.  He noted 
that Staffdel visit cut "at least a couple of months off the 
approval process." That process has thus far lasted over a year, 
not the month that the local GVN official claimed.  Even with the 
CRA approval in hand, the SECV must now work to obtain building 
permits, a process, which as the pastor outlined it, is full of 
Kafkaesque bureaucratic obstacles. 
 
9. (SBU) Despite the harassment and the difficulties in dealing 
with an opaque GVN, the pastor said that progress has been made 
since the GVN recognized the SECV in 2001.  There are budding 
lines of communication and cooperation between the SECV and local 
GVN officials.  For example, the pastor said that every year he 
writes a letter to the People's Committee notifying them that the 
100 unrecognized house church congregations of the SECV are local 
affiliates of one of the SECV's 11 recognized churches.  This 
mechanism, which local authorities appear to have accepted at 
least "de facto" even if not "de jure," has brought some relief to 
SECV worshipers in parts of the province. 
 
10. (SBU) Looking to the future, he said that the thorniest 
challenge facing the SECV will be working with the GVN to recover 
church properties expropriated after unification in 1975.  In that 
regard, he handed Staffdel a list of 31 churches and 7 other 
facilities that he maintained the GVN seized after the war.  He 
indicated that he has begun informal discussions with local 
authorities on the issue but has seen no progress thus far.  Lack 
of physical space is one of the biggest rate limiting steps to the 
expansion of the church in the Central Highlands. 
 
Tarred with the Same Brush 
-------------------------- 
 
11. (SBU) Pastor Kim noted that police presence and scrutiny of 
the SECV was heaviest in localities where violence had flared in 
April of 2004 and in areas where ethnic minorities had fled to 
Cambodia.  He attributed this intense GVN scrutiny at least in 
part to the presence of "Dega" protestant churches in the same 
area.  According to the pastor, roughly 18,000 of the 25,000 non- 
SECV affiliated Protestants in Gia Lai province belong to the 
"Dega" church movement.  (The remaining 7,000 are Mennonites or 
other smaller denominations not yet recognized by the GVN, who, 
according to the pastor also face considerable harassment.) 
 
12. (SBU) According to the pastor, there are no theological 
differences between the SECV and the "Dega" church.  Where they 
differ is on approach.  The SECV focuses on supporting the 
spiritual needs of the people, while the Dega church deals with 
"politics, not religion" in its meetings and sermons.  The Dega 
church answers to a small group of leaders "based in North 
Carolina," the pastor added. 
 
13. (SBU) The pastor acknowledged that local police find it 
difficult to differentiate between SECV and Dega house churches. 
This is particularly the case when persons known to police to be 
active in the Dega movement attend services in an SECV-affiliated 
facility, thus casting a cloud of suspicion over the SECV 
congregation.  Despite the additional harassment that the presence 
of Dega supporters brings, the SECV would not turn away those 
seeking God's word, he pastor said. 
 
14. (SBU) With regard to the April 2004 ethnic minority protests 
in the Central Highlands, the Pastor said that he was aware "3 or 
4 days" before the fact that Dega leaders were organizing 
protests.  He said SECV members did not participate, but were 
caught between the police and protestors as they gathered in 
villages to walk to church to attend Easter services.  He stated 
that he has credible information that 10 persons were killed in 
the unrest -- he witnessed two deaths himself.  He did not see 
protestors equipped with homemade weapons (as the GVN alleged), 
but protestors did use whatever was at hand when violence flared 
with police.  (He did not state which side initiated the 
violence.)  Other than perhaps two incidents, he was not aware of 
the police using armed force to suppress the protests. 
 
Links with other activists 
-------------------------- 
 
15. (SBU) Pastor Kim said he maintained contact with Dega and 
other groups who used the Church as a bully pulpit to speak out 
against the GVN and to press for other -- "political" -- causes. 
In one instance, he said that Mennonite pastor/human rights 
activist Pastor Nguyen Hong Quang sought to build a common front 
with the SECV in Gia Lai, but that he rejected the overture, 
preferring to concentrate on seeking "God's help."  (See HCMC 789 
for additional information on Pastor Quang and his arrest in Ho 
Chi Minh City in June 2004.) 
 
The View from the Catholic Church 
--------------------------------- 
 
16. (SBU) Staffdel met separately with Father Phero Nguyen Van 
Dong, Chief Parish Priest of Pleiku (the Bishop's seat is in the 
nearby town of Kontum), who, despite being flanked by local GVN 
officials, made it clear that the Catholic Church was not fully 
satisfied with the treatment it received from the GVN.  Father Van 
Dong saw some promise in the new religious affairs ordinance, 
particularly in giving more room to the church to be involved in 
charitable works. 
 
17. (SBU) The Catholic Church badly needed more priests to 
minister to churchgoers, particularly to ethnic minorities, who 
comprise two thirds of the 180,000 Catholics in the province, 
Father Van Dong said.  He regretted that at least thus far the GVN 
has prohibited the Church from supporting education in the 
province -- the Church, among other initiatives, wished to open a 
vocational school for ethnic minority youth. 
 
18. (SBU) In a show of inter-denominational support, the Father 
said that the Protestant church in Gia Lai was in greater need of 
assistance, particularly to secure the return of confiscated 
property.  In his view, the shortage of GVN-approved houses of 
worship forced the faithful to gather in house churches, breeding 
suspicion in the police, who instinctively feared unauthorized 
gatherings of any kind.  He opined that the minority unrest in 
2004 and 2001 generally was not religious in nature but driven by 
economics; particularly minority demands for land and benefits 
from the GVN. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
19. (SBU) Pastor Kim is a trusted and reliable Mission contact -- 
he is well plugged into developments in ethnic minority 
communities throughout Gia Lai province and the Central Highlands. 
His private statement to Staffdel Jannuzi that Dega Church leaders 
were focusing on political issues anathema to the GVN should not 
be discounted. 
 
20. (SBU) We are not surprised that our GVN interlocutors offered 
nothing beyond some tinkering at the margins to improve the 
environment for religious activity in the Highlands.  Communist 
Party orthodoxy runs strong there even as Hanoi's fiat weakens. 
What was encouraging was the relative optimism of Pastor Kim and 
Staffdel's other religious interlocutors who outlined ways that 
they were finding ways to coexist with the GVN and slowly expand 
the space in which their congregations could operate.  As is the 
case elsewhere in Vietnam, this coexistence comes at a price.  As 
the church depends on GVN cooperation to grow and operate, the 
Communist Party can exert control over a powerful voice for 
social, political and economic justice and change.  Pastor Kim and 
others appear to be betting that their gradualist, less 
confrontational approach will, over the long term, allow them to 
minister to both the spiritual and material needs of Vietnam's 
people. 
 
21. (SBU) Note:  On September 8, CG and Poloff shared with Le Quoc 
Hung, Director of the HCMC External Relations Office on our 
impressions of the Jannuzi visit.  We noted that the local 
authorities were (relatively) open and supportive, particularly in 
allowing Jannuzi to meet privately with some key church leaders. 
We emphasized the importance of continuing this positive trend in 
our future dealings on the Highlands, and underscored that we 
shared Jannuzi's view that the GVN should permit NGO operations in 
the region.  Hung welcomed the dialogue and cautiously "commended" 
the idea of increased involvement of NGOs in the Highlands and the 
development of "confidence building measures" to ease mistrust 
over Highlands-linked issues. 
 
22. (U) Mr. Jannuzi did not have an opportunity to review this 
message. 
 
WINNICK