SURPRISING REVELATIONS ON PROTESTANTS IN CENTRAL

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