GOVERNMENT DESTROYS PART OF VIETNAMESE MENNONITE CHURCH
By Jeremy Reynalds (07/23/05)
Workers demolished portions of the Vietnam Mennonite Church in Ho Chi Minh City, including the home of Pastor Nguyen Hong Quang and his family.
The incident occurred last Tuesday after about 200 officials blocked off the church.
According to Compass Direct News Agency (www.compassdirect.org/en/index.php), Quang's wife Le Thi Phu Dung, 31, was home alone with two of her three small children when authorities arrived. Her cell phone was jammed, Compass reported, so she could not tell people what was going on.
Quang is in prison serving a three year sentence for allegedly resisting an officer.
It was 8:00 a.m. on July 19 when authorities surrounded the Vietnam Mennonite Church in Ho Chi Minh City. They sent about 70 workers with sledge hammers and electric saws to tear down an addition to the main building, charging that it had been built without a permit -- a technicality that Compass reported is rarely required in Vietnam.
The additional section included the church meeting hall and the Quang family's apartment above.
Mrs. Quang appealed to the workers not to destroy the church. Compass reported that one individual told her, "Please sympathize with us. We are only hired hands and are only doing this because we need to put food on our tables. We don't want to destroy the church, and we'll be very careful not to destroy any of the church's moveable property."
According to a news release from the Mennonite World Conference (MWC), the workers did make temporary repairs to the house, so the family can continue to live there. However, Quang was concerned about structural instability, as a support beam had been removed.
Quang asked people to speak out. Speaking in the news release she said, "My family as well as our church wants only one thing - for our church truly to meet in freedom, not on the sly. When even a dozen persons now meet, we are pursued, chased, and cited."
The Mennonites purchased and first built on the land in 1995, Compass reported. The church expanded its building to accommodate growth in 1999. In July 2002, the fellowship added an addition to the rear of the building, including a baptismal tank.
According to Compass, local officials who have brought (legal) action against the Mennonite church 77 times during the past year charged the group with building irregularities. While the Mennonites provided a response for the alleged irregularities, Compass reported they never received an answer from the government.
Later, officials tried using a new zoning bylaw retroactively against the church. They further charged that the new portion of the center was too close to a drainage ditch and ordered it dismantled. Compass reported officials informed Quang last month that if she did not demolish the section by the end of June, they would do so in July.
Notified of the event afterwards, a number of Christian visitors came to comfort Quang. Some of them helped her clear up the debris. A U.S. diplomat also came to investigate the situation, Compass reported. On July 20 a delegation from the Vietnam Evangelical Fellowship visited Quang and her children.
Quang was elected president of the Vietnam Mennonite Church in June.
Her husband was recently moved to a prison in distant Dak Lak province, several hundred kilometers north of Ho Chi Minh City. Compass reported that Quang said her husband, already in poor health with high blood pressure and gastrointestinal problems, has fainted several times while at work. His existing health problems have been exacerbated by a grueling routine of forced labor, little rest and poor food.
PRESSURE CONTINUES ON CHURCH
Compass reported that the relentless pressure on the Vietnam Mennonite Church, a house-church organization, continues unabated – despite reportedly liberalized legislation on religion.
Quang has written two appeals to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai asking how the Mennonite Church might become legal. However, Compass reported, she has yet to receive a response. Police regularly raid small prayer and Bible study sessions at the Mennonite center, Compass reported, and forcibly escort participants to the police station for hours of interrogation.
In testimony submitted to the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam on June 20 (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:UUXh9XrcLfsJ:www.crfvn.org/readingroom/documents/June20hearing/StatementofVMC.pdf+Truong+Tri+Hien&hl=en&ie=UTF-8), Compass reported that Mennonite missionary Truong Tri Hien, who fled Vietnam last year, documented how local officials have consistently abused administrative powers to harass the Mennonite church. He told Compass, "This razing of the Mennonite center is another clear example of this administrative abuse."
Hien talked more about this in an article he wrote for Forum 18 News service (www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=598&printer=Y). He asked that the Vietnamese government be judged by its ongoing attacks on its citizens' religious freedom, and that the international community take action to force the Vietnam government to abide by international human rights standards.
House church leaders in Vietnam told Compass that they remain "highly skeptical" of Vietnam's supposedly liberalized religion laws inviting unofficial churches to register. Since the announcement of the Ordinance on Religion in Nov. 2004, no churches have accepted the invitation to register.
Among the signals they are waiting for, Compass reported, is a cessation of repressive actions such as those taken against the Mennonite church. They also question whether the U.S.-Vietnam agreement in May on improving religious freedom will produce any benefits for Vietnam's large and growing house church movement.
Additional information is available about the state of religion in Vietnam at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=415
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