BANGKOK, Thailand -- Communist Vietnam's police clashed with hundreds
of Catholics who were demanding two parishioners be released from
prison, resulting in what was described as "one of the bloodiest
religious crackdowns in recent years."
Government-controlled "television reported that about 300 people
mobbed the Nghi Phuong village people's committee building," near Vinh
city in Nghe An province on September 4, according to
Washington-based, U.S. federally-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA).
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/church-09042013193713.html
Protesters "attacking" police with stones, injured one police officer
and provoked the crackdown, Nghe An TV reported.
Police also fired into the air to disperse the crowd.
"They [police] fired 15 shots in front of the My Yen church. They beat
some parishioners with electric batons," one protester told RFA's
Vietnamese Service.
"Some parishioners had to be hospitalized. They also arrested nine to
10 people."
RFA said it was "one of the bloodiest religious crackdowns in recent
years in Vietnam".
The activist Vietnamese Redemptorists News provided what it described
as a photograph of an injured protester lying in a hospital in
northern coastal Nghe An province, which has a large Catholic
community.
One day earlier, on September 3, about 1,000 people gathered near the
site at My Yen church carrying banners and demanding the release of
Ngo Van Khoi, 53, and Nguyen Van Hai, 43, who were arrested on June
27, RFA said.
Government media said the two Catholic men were imprisoned for
"causing public disorder, injuring local officials and destroying
public property," according to the Hong Kong-based Union of Catholic
Asian News (UCAN).
UCA News
Their violations appear to be linked to a confrontation on May 22 by
Catholics who became angry when they were blocked from visiting a
local shrine of St. Anthony, UCAN reported.
"The Vietnamese government continues to imprison individuals for
religious activity or religious freedom advocacy," the
Washington-based U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
(USCIRF) said in its 2013 annual report.
USCIRF
"It uses a specialized religious police force and vague national
security laws to suppress independent Buddhist, Protestant, Hoa Hao,
and Cao Dai activities, and seeks to stop the growth of ethnic
minority Protestantism and Catholicism via discrimination, violence
and forced renunciations of their faith," the U.S. federal government
commission said.
In January, a court in Vinh sentenced 13 people, most of them
Catholics, to prison for between three and 13 years for plotting with
the Viet Tan, a U.S.-based anti-communist group, to overthrow
Vietnam's one-party regime, the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC)
reported.
BBC
"The sentences are among the harshest given to any political dissident
in Vietnam in recent years," BBC's Vietnamese service reported.
Catholics comprise about 7 percent of Vietnam's 93 million population,
compared to 10 percent who are Buddhists and 80 percent who officially
have no religious affiliation, according to the CIA World Factbook.
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Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco,
California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of
Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author
of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big
Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing
Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand:
Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final
chapter, Ceremonies and Regalia, in a new book titled King Bhumibol
Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.
His websites are:
Asia Correspondent
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(Copyright 2013 Richard S Ehrlich)
