US embassy cable - 05HOCHIMINHCITY968

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HO CHI MINH CITY 000968 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, SOCI, PREL, PGOV, KIRF, VM, ETMIN, HUMANR, RELFREE 
SUBJECT: GIA LAI AND DAK LAK PROVINCES ON DIFFERENT PATHS ON 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND VISAS 93 
 
REF:  A) HCMC 962 B) HCMC 248 C) HCMC 307 and previous 
 
1. (SBU) Summary:  During a visit to Gia Lai Province September 6- 
8 to assess the conditions of ethnic minority returnees, Gia Lai 
officials enumerated the various steps they are taking to 
normalize the status of Protestant churches in the province, in 
particular the GVN-recognized Southern Evangelical Church in 
Vietnam (SECV).  Provincial officials also committed to working 
with ConGen to resolve outstanding ethnic minority family 
reunification cases (Visas 93).  Local leaders of the SECV 
confirmed that they are receiving increasingly positive support 
from Gia Lai officials, but differences remain -- internally 
within the SECV and with Gia Lai officials -- over the total 
number of churches the SECV needs in the province.  A subsequent 
meeting with Dak Lak Province's Director of Public Security 
underscored how little progress has been made on religious freedom 
and Visas-93 issues there, although both Dak Lak and Gia Lai face 
the challenges of ethnic minority socio-economic 
disenfranchisement and, among some minorities, separatist 
sympathies.   Dak Lak's hardliner approach appears to flow from 
its hardliner Party Secretary; our contacts see little hope for 
improvement unless he is replaced or sidelined during upcoming the 
Provincial Party Congress slated for late 2005.  End Summary. 
 
2. (SBU) Hanoi Pol/C, HCMC PolOff and RRS NGO liaison visited Gia 
Lai September 6-8 to assess the conditions of ethnic minority 
returnees from Cambodia (ref A). Provincial and district-level 
officials emphasized their commitment to implement Vietnam's new 
legal framework on religion and to normalize the activities of 
Protestant churches in the province.   In a detailed briefing on 
the province's approach to religious freedom, Colonel Tran Dinh 
Thu, Vice Director of Public Security, said that there are 74,000 
Protestants belonging to six denominations.  The largest, with 
over 90 percent of the province's adherents, is the Southern 
Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV).  Thu said that the province 
has been working with the SECV's Provincial Representative Board 
to recognize its churches under Vietnam's new legal framework on 
religion.  Provincial officials have been guiding the SECV with 
the required paperwork, facilitating the training of new pastors 
and expediting the permit process for the construction of new 
churches.  Thu told us that the province has approved 135 pastors 
for training and "within a few days" would have registered 27 SECV 
churches representing 200 "meeting points" at which parishioners 
had gathered.  Until permanent church structures are built, the 
province is allowing these churches to meet in homes or other 
agreed upon meeting points.  (At the end of 2004, Gia Lai Province 
had recognized 18 SECV churches.) 
 
3. (SBU) The Vice Director noted that the return of SECV property 
expropriated post-1975 is perhaps the thorniest issue yet to be 
negotiated between the SECV and the province.  The position of the 
province is that "non-critical property" and property not 
designated for other uses under the province's master development 
plan will be returned to the church.  In other cases, the province 
will try to provide the church with at least partial compensation 
in cash or alternative real estate. 
 
4. (SBU) Thu said that the province would continue to facilitate 
the operation of the meeting points of hitherto-unrecognized SECV 
churches as well as the house churches of other Protestant 
denominations.  He said that Baptists, Mennonites, Pentecostals 
and Seventh Day Adventists have a modest presence in the province, 
but appear to be "too small to register."  He noted that the most 
important aspect is that the province ensures that these groups 
have the freedom to practice rather than "the paperwork."  We 
encouraged Thu to ensure that the province responds favorably to 
registration inquiries from other denominations. 
 
The DEGA Church 
--------------- 
 
5. (SBU) Provincial and District-level officials said they remain 
concerned over the continuing activity of ethnic minority, "Dega" 
separatists in the province.  They maintained that following the 
1992 disbanding of "FULRO" -- the armed ethnic minority resistance 
in the Central Highlands -- Dega activists began using 
Protestantism as a vehicle to spread ethnic minority exclusivism 
and anti-ethnic Vietnamese sentiment.  As detailed ref A, a small 
number of the ethnic Jarai returnees from Cambodia expressed 
directly their sympathies with the Dega movement; many others 
appeared to practice "Dega Protestantism." 
 
Visas-93 in Gia Lai Moving Ahead 
-------------------------------- 
 
6. (SBU) Vice Director of Public Security Thu also told us that he 
continues to press the provincial bureaucracy to resolve 
outstanding family reunification cases involving ethnic minorities 
(Visas-93).  Thus far, the province has processed passports for 22 
families, involving 78 persons, of which eight families (34 
persons) have emigrated.  The province is in the process of 
issuing another six families (17 persons) passports.  We thanked 
the Vice Director for working to fulfill the commitment he and 
other provincial officials made to the Consul General in March to 
quickly resolve outstanding Visas-93 cases. 
 
SECV Confirms Progress 
---------------------- 
 
7. (SBU) In a private meeting, the five leaders of the SECV Gia 
Lai Representative Board confirmed that local officials are making 
a "big effort" to normalize SECV activities in the province.  By 
the end of September, the SECV anticipates that 27 churches will 
be recognized; it hopes to have 36 or 37 recognized by year's end. 
This would be nearly as many -- 40 -- as the SECV had at the end 
of the war in 1975.  The SECV added that over the past 30 years, 
the number of its adherents in the province expanded by at least a 
factor of ten to the current 86,000. 
 
8. (SBU) The SECV representatives said that while other Protestant 
religious denominations have a presence in the province, their 
footprint is not large and their membership is unstable.  House 
churches in the province have been known to shift their 
affiliation between different Protestant denominations. 
 
9. (SBU) At the invitation of both the SECV and provincial 
government, the U.S. team attended the dedication ceremony for a 
newly recognized church for ethnic Jarai adherents, five miles 
from the provincial district capital of Pleiku.  The ceremony, 
which was conducted under tents -- the congregation does not yet 
have a permanent church building -- had a revival-like atmosphere 
and drew upwards of 1,000 people.  In Chu Se District, local 
officials also took the team to a large SECV church under 
construction.  Construction was underwritten by 1,400 ethnic Jarai 
from neighboring villages.  The principal benefactor was a wealthy 
ethnic Jarai coffee grower whose wife is on the local church 
council.  (The coffee grower's story itself is an interesting 
example of the complexities of the Central Highlands; he told us 
that his father was killed in action while serving in the Army of 
the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). He only had a tenth grade 
education.  Nonetheless, he was able to have access to ample 
government credit through available assistance programs and build 
a seemingly prosperous business.) 
 
Difference over numbers 
----------------------- 
 
10. (SBU) We told the SECV that provincial officials appeared to 
calculate that one SECV church would represent on average eight 
"meeting points."  Using the figure that of 400 to 440 meeting 
points that the SECV had previously provided, this would equate to 
50 or 60 churches overall.  Separately, other SECV officials told 
us that they are using a five-to-one ratio in calculating the 
number of churches that the SECV would need in Gia Lai, or roughly 
80 to 90 overall.  How did the Gia Lai SECV board view these 
estimates? 
 
11. (SBU) The SECV representatives acknowledged that there are 
unresolved differences of opinion within the SECV and with 
provincial leaders over the number of churches needed.  The Gia 
Lai SECV board estimates that there are 576 villages in the 
province in which the SECV has a substantial following.  In its 
negotiations with the province to facilitate Christmas 
celebrations, the SECV and the province agreed that 440 "church 
equivalents" would be allowed to hold services.  The local SECV 
leaders said that, over time, they hope to be allowed to 
regularize the status of all these "church equivalents." 
However, they have not yet broached this plan with the National 
Board of the SECV, let alone the Gia Lai government.  For its 
part, the National Board of the SECV lists 99 congregations in Gia 
Lai.  During our meeting, the members of the Gia Lai SECV 
Representative Board could not come to an agreement as to what 
would be a satisfactory number of churches to be in operation by 
the end of 2006, only that they hope to make continued progress 
and that they will deal with provincial officials "step-by-step." 
 
Little Progress in Dak Lak 
-------------------------- 
 
13. (SBU) On September 9, the team met in Dak Lak with Provincial 
Director of Public Security Senior Colonel Lu Ngoc Cu and a team 
of provincial police officials.  We opened the meeting by briefing 
the Director on the progress we have seen in Gia Lai on ethnic 
minority, religious freedom and Visas 93 issues and inquired why 
Dak Lak had been unable to achieve the same results.  For example, 
Dak Lak has recognized only one SECV church to bring its total to 
five, compared to Gia Lai's 27.  Similarly, our records show that 
none of the 58 families (230 persons) seeking family reunification 
have had their passports issued.  We offered to provide Cu and 
other provincial officials with information and assistance to help 
address questions on the Visas 93 process. 
 
14. (SBU) Saying that he spoke in his capacity as a member of the 
provincial government, Cu asserted that there is no daylight in 
understanding or application of GVN policy, but "FULRO" has taken 
advantage of Protestants and thus Dak Lak cannot address issues of 
religious freedom as fast as other provinces.  Dak Lak still found 
it "hard to differentiate" between "good Protestants" and those 
that "abuse religion." 
 
15. (SBU) Cu said that Dak Lak would allow churches to operate if 
they met four conditions:  the congregation must have a system of 
legally-approved teachings, a legally-appointed clergy, a legal 
place of worship and followers who join the group voluntarily. 
The policy of Dak Lak is that if groups have not met all these 
conditions, then their followers must worship privately at home. 
We told Cu that the practice elsewhere in southern and central 
Vietnam appeared significantly different; in accordance with the 
Prime Minister's February 2005 Instruction of Protestantism, 
worshipers are being allowed to gather in house churches even as 
issues of registration and recognition are being worked out. 
 
16. (SBU) Cu's position on Visas 93 was equally tough.  He 
proclaimed that the province's policy was not to restrict legal 
migration and asserted that the province had issued travel 
documents to 17 ethnic minority families (93 individuals). 
However, many of the Visas-93 candidates were ineligible to 
receive travel documents because they:  have unpaid debts, were 
"involved in disturbances and need to be dealt with according to 
the law" or have relatives in the United States that are wanted in 
Dak Lak for prosecution.  Cu then protested the "unilateral" 
ConGen decision to invite potential Visas-93 beneficiaries to HCMC 
for interviews with the Refugee and Resettlement Section without 
prior "consultation and coordination" with the province.  47 
families (188 persons) traveled to HCMC to these interviews.  Upon 
return to Dak Lak, some of these families sold their houses and 
otherwise created ill-will within the local community, Cu 
asserted.  (Note:  RRS records show that Dak Lak has not issued 
travel documents to any ethnic minority individual whose sponsor 
had been resettled in the United States after fleeing from Dak Lak 
to Cambodia.  End Note.) 
 
17. (SBU) We told Cu that Visas-93 is a humanitarian program and 
that the vast majority of beneficiaries residing in Dak Lak are 
women and children.  We would welcome additional coordination with 
him and other Dak Lak officials that might help expedite their 
travel.  However, the U.S. Mission on a number of occasions has 
already sought the province's input and cooperation without 
effect.  (For example, per ref b, on March 1, the Ambassador gave 
the Dak Lak People's Committee Chairman a list of 15 Visas-93 
cases and asked for the province's support in facilitating their 
travel to the United States.)  With regard to the 47 families who 
had recently traveled to HCMC, each one had been given a letter of 
introduction explaining the purpose of the visit.  This letter 
surely must have been shared with local police officials who had 
to authorize the travel of the Visas-93 applicants.  At the end of 
the meeting, Cu and the U.S. team agree to exchange information on 
the Visas-93 applications.  We also offered to have RRS staff 
travel to Dak Lak to brief Cu and other officials on the program. 
 
18. (SBU) Comment:  The contrast between Gia Lai and Dak Lak is 
increasingly stark.  Gia Lai is making clear, measurable progress 
with the prospect of more to come on religious freedom and Visas- 
93 issues.  The same cannot be said thus far of Dak Lak, although 
both provinces contend with the same issues of ethnic minority 
socio-economic disenfranchisement and Dega nationalism.  What is 
new in the Central Highlands is that Dak Lak increasingly is 
isolated in its hardliner approach to these issues. 
 
19. (SBU) The key difference between the two provinces is 
leadership.  Within the SECV, Gia Lai's SECV leaders appear to be 
much more successful at building a firewall -- at all levels 
within the province -- between itself and Dega activists than 
their Dak Lak counterparts.  Similarly, on the government side, 
the more moderate Pham The Dung replaced the hardliner war veteran 
Nguyen Vy Ha as People's Committee Chairman of Gia Lai Province, 
paving the way for change in policy implementation.  Reliable 
contacts tell us that the main obstacle in Dak Lak is Provincial 
Party Secretary Y Luyen Nia Kdam.  According to a party insider, 
Kdam, an ethnic Ede, is a third-generation revolutionary who 
opposes any relaxation of the tough line the province has adopted. 
This contact told us that Kdam could be pushed aside during the 
upcoming provincial Party Congress, slated for late Fall 2005. 
 
WINNICK