Calling On State Department to List Vietnam as a Religious Freedom Violator

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding. I want to thank Mr. Royce for this very, very important and timely resolution, and both the chairman and ranking member, Chairman Berman and ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, for bringing this very, very important resolution to the floor as the session winds down.

Mr. Speaker, in early July, Nam Nguyen, this is Nam Nguyen right here, a Catholic from Con Dau, was savagely beaten to death for his faith by the Vietnamese police. His brother, Tai Nguyen, testified at an August Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing that police repeatedly kicked his brother in the chest and the back and on his temples. Of course, that means there are fewer marks on the face, but his body was riddled with punches and broken bones.

``Blood,'' he said, ``poured out of his nose and ears.'' Tai said his brother told his wife he couldn't handle the beatings anymore. The wife, seeing her husband's broken body, kneeled in front of the police and begged them to stop. In response, they punched and kicked him again and again and again, and Nam Nguyen died in his wife's arms, this man right here.

What was Nam Nguyen's alleged crime? His faith in Jesus Christ and his devotion to his Catholic parish. The entire Catholic community and its property in Con Dau, you see, is in the process of being confiscated or stolen by the Vietnamese authorities. The faithful are a ripe target for the atheistic Government of Vietnam. The proximate cause for the crackdown and unspeakable violence was the May 4 funeral of an elderly woman and an attempt to bury her in the town's Catholic cemetery.

Nam Nguyen was a pallbearer when the police busted up the funeral procession of over 1,000 people, beating over 100 mourners, arresting dozens, and deliberately beating two pregnant women so as to kill their unborn babies. They even tried to take the casket. The reign of terror on this 85-year-old Catholic community continues to this day. At least two remain in prison, and the persecution shows no sign of abating.

What happened in Con Dau isn't an isolated incident. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, its annual 2010 report, ``Property disputes between the government and the Catholic Church continue to lead to harassment, property destruction and violence, sometimes by contract thugs hired by the government to break up peaceful prayer vigils.'' Now we know that includes funerals as well. Other faith communities have seen a significant spike in harassment, persecution, confiscation, and violence as well.

Mr. Speaker, in 2005, I led a human rights mission to Hanoi, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City. I met with almost 60 pastors, priests and leading Buddhists, including the Venerable Thich Quang Do, who was under pagoda arrest. All expressed hope and varying degrees of optimism due to an apparent easing of religious persecution in Vietnam.

U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom John Hanford told us that there were promises of further reform made and what he called ``deliverables,'' concrete actions by the Vietnamese Government that it said it would do in the area of religious freedom, coupled with a trade agreement, and all of that led to the lifting
of the Country of Particular Concern, or CPC, designation.

Do you know what happened then? Hanoi responded with a massive retaliation against both political and religious believers. Signers of Bloc 8406, the magnificent human rights manifesto promoting respect for the rule of law and nonviolence, a manifesto that parallels China's Charter 08 and Czechoslovakia's Charter 77, were hunted down methodically and imprisoned. Many religious believers who expected a thaw and reform and

openness were arrested and in some cases rearrested and sent to prison.

Father Ly, this man here, is a Catholic priest and a prisoner of conscience for 17 years in jail, a man who committed no crimes. I met Father Ly when he was under house arrest in Hue. He was rearrested in 2007, held in confinement and denied emergency medical attention. So bad is he that even the Vietnamese let him out under kind of a humanitarian parole, but he is still under arrest.

Look at this picture of him taken at trial. Look at the animosity in the eyes of these guards. And when they get behind closed doors, Mr. Speaker, they beat and they break bones and they break heads, and it leads to death or permanent maiming.

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Did CPC designation help mitigate religious persecution prior to being lifted? It appears so. The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom notes that Hanoi released prisoners, it expanded some legal protections for nationally recognized groups, and prohibited the policy of forced renunciations, at least in some cases, and expanded the zone of toleration.

Congress, the President, and all of us who espouse fundamental human rights ought to be outraged at Vietnam's turn for the worse. We should stand with the oppressed, and not the oppressors. President Obama should redesignate Vietnam a Country of Particular Concern for its egregious violations of human rights. CPC, independently prescribed by statute, the International Religious Freedom Act, has in the past and can again be a very, very useful tool in promoting religious liberty.

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