US embassy cable - 03HOCHIMINHCITY691

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HO CHI MINH CITY 000691 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
Department for EAP/BCLTV, DRL, PRM 
 
E. O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, PGOV, PREF, SOCI, KIRF, VM, HUMANR, ETMIN, RELFREE 
SUBJECT: SURPRISING REVELATIONS ON PROTESTANTS IN CENTRAL 
HIGHLANDS 
 
REF:  HCMC 1270 
 
1.  (SBU)  Summary:  While the official rhetoric seemed to focus 
on respect for religion and the importance of meeting the 
"spiritual needs" of the people during the Ambassador's recent 
visit to Dak Lak and Lam Dong provinces, local Protestant church 
leaders told a story of continuing limits on organized religious 
worship amidst a flourishing underground church.  Unlike the 
province's Catholics, who suffer most from official control over 
numbers of seminarians and priests, Protestants seem to face 
almost impossible conditions on sanctioned worship and the 
registration of new churches.  Most startling was the perhaps 
unintended disclosure by local Protestant representatives that the 
vast majority of unofficial house churches have already applied 
for official recognition, despite government claims that only a 
handful have tried to legalize their status.  End summary. 
 
2.  (SBU)  The Ambassador, Emboffs, and ConGenoffs visited Dak Lak 
and Lam Dong provinces July 23-26, making calls on the People's 
Committees, religious leaders, and the provincial government 
offices responsible for religious and ethnic minority affairs. 
They also visited government offices responsible for economic 
planning and investment, private businesses, local universities, 
and a local village (septels). 
 
3.  (SBU)  Lam Dong People's Committee Chairman Phan Thien 
described human rights and religious freedom as a process -- one 
in which Vietnam wanted to obtain the highest level. 
Acknowledging the importance of religion to fulfill the spiritual 
needs of the people, Chairman Thien said that local authorities 
should develop a better understanding of the regulations governing 
religion to better deal with religious believers.  At the same 
time, he held the Protestants responsible for a historical 
association with separatists that made it difficult to distinguish 
between authentic believers and Dega.  While comparing the 
screening of applications for new Protestant churches to the 
scrutiny accorded Muslims in the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11, he 
assured the Ambassador that he had instructed the relevant 
authorities to speed up the recognition process. 
 
4.  (SBU)  Dak Lak People's Committee Chairman Nguyen Van Lang 
characterized his guiding principle in dealing with religion as 
respect for individual freedom to worship.  He reminded the 
Ambassador that 22 pastors from Dak Lak had traveled to attend the 
organizing conference for the government recognized Southern 
Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV) in April 2001.  Currently, he 
said, there were two legal Protestant churches in the province. 
Two more were under consideration by provincial officials.  Asked 
directly about reports of church closures, Chairman Lang responded 
that no "churches" could have been closed since there were only 
the two legal churches.  (Comment:  Betraying what may come closer 
to his real feelings on the subject, he pointed out that the 
ethnic minorities were never religious until they were converted 
by foreigners. End comment)  He noted a steady decrease in the 
number of migrants to Dak Lak --both Kinh Vietnamese and ethnic 
minorities -- even as the economy continued to grow. 
 
5.  (SBU)  Vo Van Tai, Chairman of the Dak Lak provincial 
Committee on Religious and Ethnic Minority Affairs, provided a 
somewhat longer recitation on the current state of religion in Dak 
Lak.  He said there were presently 100,000 Buddhists (up from 
40,000 in 1975), 5,000 Cao Dai, and 213,00 Catholics (up from 
60,000 over the same period) in Dak Lak.  The Catholic Church had 
gone from one bishop and 34 priests to 2 bishops and 78 priests 
during that time, and currently had three seminarians from the 
province studying at the Sea Star Seminary in Nha Trang.  He said 
there were 130,000 Protestants in Dak Lak, including 40,000 who 
had been "officially baptized," but became quite angry at the 
Ambassador's reference to the "Dega" as Protestants.  To 
demonstrate the province's other achievements, he noted that a Dak 
Lak pastor currently served on the SECV Executive Board in HCMC, 
while two ethnic minority students studied at the SECV seminary 
there.  As an aside, he remarked that eight others had "failed" to 
meet the entrance requirements for the seminary, but did not 
elaborate on whether those were the requirements of the SECV or 
the government. 
 
6.  (SBU)  According to Chairman Tai, the two legal Protestant 
churches, recognized in late 2001, served approximately 1,000 
believers in Buon Me Thuot and Phuoc An (30 kilometers form the 
provincial capital).  Giving slightly different numbers than 
Chairman Lang, he said that four more churches had applied for 
recognition and were currently under consideration.  The two 
applications he had discussed with the Consul General on her last 
visit (ref A) had merely been verbal at the time, but had now been 
submitted officially in writing.  Describing the registration 
process, he said the SECV required that each church 
("association") have 200 members before it could apply for 
recognition.  Once approved, they could then apply for permission 
to build an actual church structure and assign a permanent pastor. 
While all were free to practice at home alone, problems sometimes 
arose when groups tried to practice their faith in an organized 
manner.  He added that churches could not be issued permits to 
build until they were recognized.  However, they could only be 
recognized after they had gathered informally for a time and then 
asked for permission.  Unrecognized churches needed to be 
disbanded because they were built without permits and were 
inherently dangerous. 
 
7.  (SBU)  Emphasizing that all legal church and social activities 
were allowed so long as they did not harm society, Chairman Tai 
gave his personal assurance that no provincial official had ever 
tried to disband an existing church, or attempt to force the 
renunciation of anyone's religious faith.  Referring to the list 
of specific cases provided by the Consul General on her last 
visit, he assured the Ambassador that none of the 43 individuals 
named could have been arrested for religious reasons because none 
were on the provincial list of religious believers.  The 
Ambassador suggested Chairman Tai send the list to MPS to see if 
any of the 43 was on the list of people who had actually been 
arrested. 
 
8.  (SBU)  The provincial SECV Representative Board provided a 
surprisingly frank assessment of the situation faced by 
Protestants in Dak Lak.  The local Board consists of ethnic 
minority Ede pastors Y Ta and Y Ke Eban, as well as Truong Xuan 
Dieu, a former chaplain in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and 
the current legal pastor of the recognized church in Phuoc An. 
They received the Ambassador in the home (and house church) of an 
unrecognized Kinh pastor who serves as secretary to the Board. 
Pastor Dieu was unable to attend.  Speaking generally about 
conditions for worship in Dak Lak, the pastors noted that the two 
legal churches (Pastor Dieu's mixed Kinh and Ede congregation and 
Pastor Mai Hai's predominantly Ede congregation in town) were able 
to operate regular Sunday schools.  Most of the remainder of the 
province's Protestants practiced their faith at home, but some 
still gathered together unofficially.  While there were not enough 
bibles to go around, the Board had requested more from provincial 
authorities and the SECV offices in HCMC. 
 
9.  (SBU)  The three pastors affirmed that there were currently 
four applications for recognition pending government approval -- 
three belonging to them and a fourth for an ethnic minority M'nong 
pastor in Dak Min District.  The four congregations had close to 
5,000 members between them (the Kinh was the smallest, with only 
500), and the government had promised they would be approved this 
year.  They understood that the government needed to look at the 
background of the pastors and the "conditions of worship" among 
the believers, but assured the Ambassador that they were all 
"authentic" Protestants. 
"Troublemakers" sometimes came to local house churches talking of 
separatism, but there was no contact with foreigners.  The pastors 
then confided that they had actually forwarded 70 applications for 
recognition in late 2002.  Provincial authorities had then picked 
out just the four for possible approval. 
 
10.  (SBU)  Comment:  While the meetings with provincial officials 
covered little or no new ground, the rather startling revelation 
by the SECV Board regarding the large number of applications 
submitted for official recognition provides the first real 
evidence that the GVN has been going slow on new church approvals. 
Prior to departing for the trip, ConGenoffs heard a similar 
allegation from a Lam Dong pastor with whom they met in HCMC. 
According to that source, all of the house churches in Lam Dong 
had already applied for recognition through the appropriate SECV 
channels.  There, too, the provincial authorities seemed to be 
picking and choosing a few churches for possible recognition, 
while the others were afraid to press for attention.  At the very 
least, this points to something less than honesty and fair dealing 
from the provincial administrations (and possibly the central 
government).  At the same time, this new information may present a 
unique opportunity to challenge the government on the slow rate of 
approvals and bring light to what has thus far been a very  opaque 
process.  The bottom line, though, is that despite GVN heavy- 
handedness and not atypical slow operating procedures, religious 
life for Christians continues, albeit mostly in non-recognized, 
unofficial church gatherings. 
WHITE