Posted on 08/02/2009 4:36:17 PM PDT by SJackson
D.C. outcry: Montagnard cause grows desperate
Sunday, August 2, 2009
By Lorraine Ahearn
Staff Writer
GREENSBORO — Until the sweltering day in June when they were reunited at Ho Chi Minh City Airport, it had been 30 years since H’Juel Ya’s mother and grandmother laid eyes on each other.
The elder had been imprisoned by the Vietnamese government as a Christian; the younger fled into the jungle, escaping to Cambodia.
From there, she eventually made her way to the United States, settling in Greensboro in 1992, part of a community now estimated at 9,000 strong in North Carolina, the largest such ethnic enclave of Montagnards outside Vietnam.
“It was happy, but sad, seeing them together,” said H’Juel, 19, of her first trip to Vietnam. “Leaving her mother was the hardest decision my mother ever had to make. Montagnards are so close.”
For many such fractured families living in exile and watching the long anguish of human rights abuses in Vietnam — religious repression, jailing of labor leaders and journalists, the crushing of political dissent — a glimmer of hope has emerged.
Amid reports of escalating civil rights violations, members of Congress held a press conference Thursday in Washington calling for the Vietnamese government to release 400 alleged political prisoners.
The action was led by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), sponsor of this year’s toughly worded Vietnam Human Rights Act, to which Greensboro Republican Howard Coble signed on as a co-sponsor last week.
The resolution, laying out a litany of human rights abuses on the part of the Communist regime, would tie non-humanitarian foreign aid levels to progress toward a civil society.
“This gives us some leverage to insist that they improve their human rights approach better than they’ve done in the past,” Coble said in a phone interview Friday, citing the heavy concentration of Montagnards in his district for his interest.
Earlier in July, 37 U.S. senators led by Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., signed a letter demanding the release of Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly.
A symbol of religious repression in Vietnam, the 63-year-old Hue Catholic priest has spent a total of 17 years in prison since 1970. Photos by Agence France Presse from his last trial on political dissidence charges show the priest bound and gagged by guards as he stood trial.
But to understand the picture in everyday Vietnam, consider H’Juel’s recent trip. A UNCG student and caseworker for the Greensboro nonprofit Montagnard Dega Association, she was immediately picked out as an American when she arrived in the Central Highlands, the mountains and valleys that are home to the tribes.
“It’s your glasses,” relatives told her. Villagers are so poor, no one can afford them. “I didn’t see a single person wearing glasses. Even old people.”
Cousins her age did not go to school — let alone college — but worked in the heat, picking coffee beans, doing wash.
Her uncle works closely with local authorities, therefore, H’Juel and her family needed to register with the police only when they arrived, to let them know who was staying overnight and which extended family would be visiting.
Yet a fellow Greensboro Montagnard who flew with H’Juel’s family to Vietnam but whose relatives weren’t as well-connected was stopped and questioned daily during the trip, H’Juel said.
While in Vietnam, H’Juel attended Protestant services, but at a government-approved church, where the service was in Vietnamese, not the Mnong language her relatives speak.
Apart from the repressive flare-ups that make headlines — the June attack on a Buddhist monastery in south Vietnam, for example, or arrests of Catholics last week — the very idea of government-registered churches troubles those promoting civil rights.
Under international law, there is no provision for registering churches, and human rights advocates argue that the practice is the first step toward government control.
Denominations that join hundreds and thousands of citizens together on Sunday mornings are perceived — in the mind of the authoritarian regime — as dangerous.
“It’s the organization that’s the problem,” said Scott Flipse, director of the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom’s East Asia program. “That’s the threat to the government.”
Part of a delegation to Vietnam in May, Flipse said the commission had verified that 355 Montagnards are currently imprisoned by the government. This comes against a backdrop of accelerating repression, with the shutdowns of newspapers and blogs, the arrest of a prominent labor lawyer and the destruction of one of the original Christian churches in the highlands last spring.
And though the Human Rights resolution addresses an array of broken promises by the Vietnamese government since it joined the World Trade Organization and prepares to reassume presidency of the U.N. Security Council this fall, some believe the Montagnards may be the most desperate part of the picture.
Before the Vietnam War, in which the Montagnards fatefully took sides with U.S. forces, the population of the highland tribes numbered in the millions; today, unofficial estimates are as low as 650,000.
Because of that history, as well as such ongoing land issues as a massive bauxite mining rights sale in the highlands, exiled leaders fear the Montagnards are destined to be completely displaced, if not erased.
Said Y Siu H’long, executive director of the Montagnard Dega Association, “For Buddhists, they want them to practice within the border of the law. For the Montagnards, they want to kill us all, so they can live on our land. That’s the main point.”
At Human Rights Watch, observers noted that just prior to Vietnam’s acceptance into the WTO, there was a climate of tolerance of newspapers, unions and political opposition.
But once Vietnam had been embraced by the world community and removed from the U.S. State Department’s “Countries of Particular Concern” human rights watch list in late 2006, the situation deteriorated with crackdowns on Internet use and arrests of labor leaders.
In a recent BBC interview, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak maintained there was “no evidence” that Vietnam should be put back on the list.
Out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, an amendment to the proposed appropriations bill seeks to put Vietnam back on the watch list.
Rep. Brad Miller, who sits on the Foreign Affairs panel, has supported that idea in the past, a spokeswoman said last week, and is reviewing the human rights resolution, which has a companion version in the Senate introduced by B oxer.
Previous versions of the resolution passed the House but failed in the Senate, where a core group of senators led by Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry argued that trade and geopolitical interests take precedence.
This year, however, human rights advocates say there could be a policy shift in the new administration.
“I’m not saying I would bet the farm on it,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “But if this thing passes, it would send a very potent message
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Stop the New Vietnam War: Attacks on Catholic Priests!
By Deacon Keith Fournier
7/31/2009 Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
There is a new “Vietnam War” underway. The enemies of life, freedom and true liberation are attacking Catholic priests in Vietnam!
Catholic Christians are pouring into the Streets of Vietnam protesting the attacks on Catholic Priests and the persecution of those who follow the ancient faith. Will they receive the support of their brethren throughout the world? HANOI (Catholic Online) – The news out of Vietnam demonstrates a reality which few acknowledge these days when we mistakenly think we have become so “enlightened”, the existence of evil. It demands immediate global responsive action. There is a new “Vietnam War” underway. The enemies of life, freedom and true liberation are attacking Catholic priests in Vietnam!
The leftover remnant of the discredited and inhuman ideology of Maoism is now turning its ire against what has always been its greatest enemy, the only true humanism, the Christian faith. The fullness of that Christian faith, with the only systematic social development of the implications of that new and true humanism which can inform a new social movement, is the Catholic faith. That is why the denizens of death and the carriers of such a discredited ideology as Marxism have decided to strike against the Catholic Church by striking its shepherds and trying to scatter the sheep. (Zech 13:7)
Old Marxists never die, they just recreate themselves. Claiming, as their founders did, that the new man (or new woman) can somehow be created through a Statist manipulation of the political and economic order, they keep morphing into new expressions and pushing their old lies. In an age which has become what Pope Benedict rightly labeled a “dictatorship of relativism”, rejecting all truth claims, they are finding traction once again.
Yet, in Vietnam, they have not changed all that much in their message or their means. Marxism, and its evil clone, the anti-life, anti-freedom and anti-human ideology of the cultural revolution of the former tyrant, the Chairman Mao Zedong, continue to enforce their agenda through State sponsored violence. Their greatest enemy is still the only champion of true freedom, the Catholic Church and the message which she proclaims of true human liberation in Jesus Christ.
There is a new Vietnam War breaking out. However, the world is paying little or no attention. The storm troopers of the inhuman ideology of Maoism are attacking Catholic priests. You see, any Church that proclaims that the only way to a new humanity is through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, the New Man, who in his Sacred humanity reveals the new humanity and through his atoning death made it possible for all men and women to receive and live it by overcoming the separation caused by sin, is the still the greatest threat to the lies of the counterfeit ideology of atheistic Marxism and, its evil clone, Maoism.
Just recently, it was announced by the tyrant regime ruling Vietnam that seven Catholics who were wrongfully arrested after the illegal police action against the Catholics of the Church at Tam Toa will be prosecuted in a kangaroo court proceeding. They are being held without bail in a flagrant violation of not only the Natural law but clear and unquestionable mandates found in the international law. Asia news reports below that one of the priests, who was violently attacked while helping the faithful to pray for those wrongfully arrested, has, thank God, survived the brutal attack.
Where is the outrage in the international community? Where is the outrage in the United States of America? We ask our readers throughout the world to turn the tide. Pray for our persecuted brethren in Vietnam. Then, following the clear teaching of our Church, stand in solidarity with them and demand that they be afforded the full human rights that must be theirs in accordance with the Natural Law and the dictates of international law.
Our priests are being attacked! Let’s be honest, it is becoming a frequent reality. Yes, in the words of the great early Church historian Tertullian, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church!” However, we must do everything within our power to stop this evil attack against them, and against the truth which alone can liberate all men and women, the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Over the last few years we have witnessed the growing hostility toward Christians as it reaches a global danger zone. Catholic Online is deeply concerned over the growing intolerance directed toward faithful Christians and, in particular, Catholics who have not and will not compromise on the heart of the Christian faith and their defense of the dignity of every human person against every kind of attack be it Marxist or Maoist ideology or the secular humanism and culture of death found increasingly in the decline of the West.
“Christianophobia” is a word coined by the Holy See to explain this growing anti-Christian sentiment in our age. It is spreading in the European community, in America and throughout the entire world. It is now showing its violent propensities in Vietnam. As an international news source we report on its effects regularly.
It’s most obvious and dangerous manifestation is found in the direct pogrom against Catholic Christians and their priests in Vietnam. We must do everything we can to bring it to an end. We must stop the new War in Vietnam!
Over the last few years we have witnessed the evil inflicted against Christians in Iraq, the anti-Christian hostility spreading throughout the entire Middle East, the attacks against Christians in Asia and, in particular, the deadly violence in India. We have seen this evil “Christianophobia” spread into countless other places through the less blatant but still insidious anti-Christian ideology fueling so much of the anti-life, anti-family and anti- freedom ideologies of the declining West.
Sadly, we did not rise up the way we could or should when our brethren were attacked in Iraq. Nor did we act when they killed our brethren in India! We have done little to truly expose the dangers faced by Christians in the land where Jesus walked. In short, we Christians have failed in our watch.
We have another chance now. Ironically it comes in the Nation which so many of us, particularly Americans, still remember with regret, no matter which “side” of the failed Vietnam War we stood on, the Nation of Vietnam. That was then and this is now. There is a new Vietnam War being waged. They are attacking Catholic priests and seeking to silence the voice of authentic liberation, the Catholic Church. We must not fail this time.
Rise up and defend our brethren in Vietnam. Stop the New War in Vietnam!
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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I haven't posted much on this for a few years, but terrorism, it's on topic. Not state sponsored, state implemented.
So I guess that means it's not happening.
ping
.
NEVER FORGET
.
Precisely what we American & South Vietnamese Soldiers were fighting so selflessly to prevent from happening long ago during the Vietnam War:
Freeper Alert: Prominent Vietnam Pastor Flees Encircled home, then Jailed, Wife Beaten
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2304032/posts
Stop the New Vietnam War: They’re Killing Catholic Priests!
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2304943/posts
.
NEVER FORGET
.
NEVR FORGET
.
Send your FREE Pastor NGUYEN CONG CHINH Letters to:
President NGUYEN MINH TRIET
President of Vietnam
C/O Embassy of Vietnam
1233 20th St NW
Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036
.
Thank you, All, for your loving kindness on behalf of others.
T’is THE ANSWER..!!!
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NEVER FORGET
.
ping
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Montagnard PLEI ME Special Forces Camp - November 14, 1965
(See 3rd & 6th Photos down)
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
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Prayers for the priests bump!
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CLARITY =
Hanoi denies attacks on priests. The diocese of Vinh produces photos
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15925&size=A
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Amen and Godspeed.
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