Vietnam’s ‘Decree on Religion’ Clamps Down on Christianity

Leaders and Clergy on a Short Rope
Articles 14 through 26 of ND-92 include highly detailed and intrusive qualifications and provisions for clergy training, ordination, stripping of credentials, placement, change of placement, travel and so on. All of these matters are universally considered internal ones for religious organizations.

International travel by clergy and believers for religious reasons now requires permission from the central Government Committee of Religious Affairs in Hanoi, and full details of the meetings to be attended must be provided to the government. The government requires 25 working days to decide and reply. A Vietnamese religious person granted permission to travel abroad must report any change in status granted to them by the overseas organization, and must disclose the content of courses studied.

These requirements are new. If enforced, they will largely frustrate the regular international travel of the hundreds of Vietnamese Protestants who have in recent years been going abroad for religious meetings and conferences and training. This, one suspects, is the intention. 

Religious Activity Confined to Four Walls of a Church
There is a strong, explicit theme in the decree trying to confine and limit “religious activity” to take place within the four walls of a church building. Most Protestants in Vietnam do not have church buildings.
 
Article 31 prescribes the times and conditions under which a religious congregation can ask for permission to conduct a religious activity outside a legal church establishment. If the activity involves anyone outside the membership, the authorities require 15 working days to consider a reply. Try to imagine attempting to organize the funeral of a prominent person which many from afar would like to attend, and which required more room than the local church building. 

Foreigners and Religion
Twenty-five working days are required for the religious-affairs committee to consider a detailed request for foreign religious leaders to visit Vietnam to participate in a religious event. Same holds true for foreign students who want to study in Vietnam. Foreigners living in Vietnam may request permission to meet for religious worship only within in a church building, a reversal of the current practice in which some foreign congregations meet in homes, hotels or other buildings.

What Others Say
Catholic
Trinh Viet Phuong has published an analysis of the new decree on the government-despised Dan Lam Bao (Citizen Journalist) website, often used by people with damaging inside information on Vietnam’s leaders, as well as sometimes by the Vietnam Catholic Committee for Justice and Peace. It states (translation mine): “This (new decree) is a very regressive document compared to the 2005 Decree, which itself had many shortcomings because it brazenly, unjustly and illogically inserts itself into internal religious affairs and seriously infringes on the basic human rights of our citizens. Most certainly it will cause much upheaval in society, and predictably will cause immeasurable social complications.”
 
Further, “It is a backward step in the implementation of religious freedom and must be widely denounced both in Vietnam and abroad”. 

Buddhist
On Nov. 29, the International Buddhist Information Bureau published an article that notes a sharply increased role for the Ministry of Interior in overseeing religious activities, and that the Government Committee of Religious Affairs is now headed by Lt. Gen. Pham Dung, a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Public Security. The new decree retains the most restrictive provisions of the earlier Decree ND-22, the article says, “but it also adds new obligations and vaguely worded provisions that give authorities greater leeway to sanction and restrict religious activities.” The new decree is a backward step, the article concludes.

Protestant
The website of the Vietnam Human Rights Committee published an article Dec. 19 by Protestant lawyer and activist Nguyen Van Dai, who is under restricted release following a prison sentence. Dai notes several significant internal contradictions in Decree ND-92. One is the new and severe limitation of religious practice during the 20-year probation period following the first registration of a congregation by its commune level peoples’ committees. He observes that only “religious worship meetings” (sinh hoat ton giao) are allowed, not “religious activities” or “operations” such as organizing religious events, conducting missionary work, internal organizational development, electing leaders, holding classes, repairing or renovating facilities, or conducting charitable activities.
 
Dai pessimistically concludes that “[t]he goal of Decree 92/2012 ND-CP is to completely abolish the organizational structure and religious operations of the Protestant denominations that were formed some 20 years ago and have not been registered according to Decree 22/2005 ND-CP.” This is a reference to the large house-church movement in Vietnam that began in 1988. 

Government Sources
Party and state media sources reported in January that the head of the government religious-affairs committee not only introduced Decree ND-92, but also proposed amendments to the Ordinance on Religion and Belief. It will be interesting to see what these are, given the direction of the new implementation decree.
 
Prominent in each of the official press accounts on the publication of ND-92 was the identical line: “Participants emphasized the corrupt use of religious and ethnic issues by hostile forces to sabotage the Vietnamese State.” This refers to Vietnam’s ongoing concern about the rapid growth of Protestant Christianity among ethnic minorities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and Northwest Mountainous Region. Though the government now rarely uses “eliminate” language, it is very open in its intention to “contain” Christianity. As recently as Christmas 2012, officials in some ethnic areas brutally attempted to force recantations.