Quê Me Quê Me: Action for democracy in Vietnam & Vietnam Committee on Human Rights
PARIS, 5th February 2008 (IBIB) – From house arrest at the Nguyen Thieu Monastery in Binh Dinh province, the Supreme Patriarch of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) Thich Huyen Quang has sent an audio Message to the international community and Vietnamese around the world. The Message was recorded in secret and broadcast on Radio Free Asia on Monday 4th February. This is the first time in five years, since the Patriarch was placed under tight surveillance following a crack-down on the banned UBCV in 2003, that his voice has been heard on the international media.
Firstly, Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang, 89, sent special thanks to Amnesty International for adopting him as a “prisoner of conscience” and launching a worldwide campaign for his release. In this campaign, Amnesty International Group 65 in Toronto, Canada, sent over 3,500 letters and petitions to the Vietnamese and Canadian governments and Amnesty sections in Massachusetts and California also sent thousands of letters to the US and Vietnamese governments, along with hundreds of post cards to Thich Huyen Quang wishing him courage and good health. The International Buddhist Information Bureau, who received copies of these letters, informed the UBCV Patriarch of this campaign.
On behalf of the UBCV, Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang thanked Group 65 for “the thousands of letters they have sent to the Vietnamese and Canadian governments calling for the re-establishment of the UBCV’s legal status, and campaigning for my release and religious freedom… Your selfless actions warm my heart, and that of every Buddhist in Vietnam. There is an old saying: “Across the four oceans, all men are brothers”. Today, your concern for the plight of others in such a far-away country as Vietnam demonstrates this spirit of humanity, which transcends all borders, political opinions and religious beliefs. In Buddhism, we call this Universal Compassion, the commitment to save all beings from suffering, regardless of origin or race”.
Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang also extended warm thanks to “the government and people of Canada, who, for so many decades, have shown such generous hospitality to Vietnamese Boat people in their quest for freedom. You have given them refuge, a safe haven in which to settle and live freely in accordance with their ideals and beliefs. This is a fine example of civilisation, one that should teach a lesson to developing countries such as Vietnam”.
Expressing his deep appreciation of recent statements made by the Vietnamese Diaspora in Australia, the US and worldwide in “support [of] the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam in our struggle for religious freedom and human rights”, Thich Huyen Quang also commended UBCV Buddhist monks, nuns, and lay-followers abroad who “diligently respected and observed Edict No 9, which I promulgated, as well as the recent Notices and Circulars issued by the UBCV’s Executive Institute “Vien Hoa Dao”. These texts are aimed to reorganize and reinforce the UBCV in this period of new challenges, to honour two thousand years of Vietnamese Buddhism, and shed lustre on the contribution of our forefathers and all those who have given their lives to protect our people, defend our territorial sovereignty and preserve our faith”.
Edict No. 9, issued by Thich Huyen Quang and the “Notice on the Implementation of Edict No. 9”, issued by Thich Quang Do in September 2007 are two important UBCV documents which provide for a new, streamlined structure of the overseas UBCV in order to prevent strategies orchestrated by the Vietnamese Communist Party to create schisms within the UBCV and undermine the UBCV movement for religious freedom and human rights.
l Mr Stan Jolly, Coordinator of Amnesty International Group 65 explained their campaign for the release of Thich Huyen Quang in an interview broadcast on Radio Free Asia the same day. Mr. Jolly said that Group 65 had been working on the case for over 17 years. Each month they met to draft new letters, sending literally thousands of petitions, letters and postcards to the Vietnamese and Canadian governments. “We were “assigned” the case of Thich Huyen Quang by the London headquarters of Amnesty International”, he said, adding that he had become more personally involved after a visit to Vietnam with his family in 1994: “The hospitality and the friendliness of the Vietnamese people really touched us. We felt that this was a way we could help to pay back some of the kindness and hospitality that the Vietnamese people had extended to us in 1994”.
“The group gradually realised that our campaign is not just about the Venerable Thich Huyen Quang. It’s ultimately about the struggle to promote and defend internationally-recognised human rights. [It is] a struggle on behalf of all the 80 million citizens of Vietnam, whether that person be a humble rice farmer, a university student, an ethnic montagnard or someone as important and respected as the Supreme Patriarch of the UBCV”.
Refuting Vietnam’s claims that Thich Huyen Quang, Thich Quang Do and the UBCV are “engaged in politics”, Mr. Jolly recalled Thich Huyen Quang’s remarks to former US Ambassador Raymond Burghardt who visited the UBCV Patriarch in Binh Dinh province: “We believe that the State should stay out of religion. We will stay out of politics if the politicians will stay out of religion”. “It’s a principle of international human rights law that the State does not have any role to play in authorizing or not authorizing, in legalizing or not legalizing, any church, whether it be the Roman Catholic, the Pentecostal or the Buddhist Church”, he said. “In our view, [Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do] are only engaging in politics because their right to freedom to practice their religion, freedom to associate with whoever they wish, freedom of expression is being denied. If those rights were not being denied, they would not be playing any role in politics”.
Whereas Group 65 receives regular replies from the Canadian government and its Ambassador in Hanoi – the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was one of the only heads of state at the APEC Summit in Hanoi in 2006 to raise human rights issues, including the cases of Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do – Vietnam has never made any reply. “We have never received a single response to the thousands of letters or petitions, from a single Vietnam official in the past 17 years”, said Mr. Jolly, neither from “the Vietnamese Ambassador in Ottawa, from the previous or current Presidents and Prime Ministers of Vietnam, the Minister of Public Security, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Health, nor from the 22 Members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam”.
Noting that the Canadian International Development Agency is funding several projects in Vietnam, including a project on legal reform, Mr. Jolly said: “if we Canadians can’t even get a polite acknowledgement, a simple gesture of courtesy, to any of our thousands of letters, why is Canada continuing to fund these projects for law reform? What kind of law reform is it, when the law is used to ban the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam? This is in direct contradiction to the UN Charter on Human Rights and the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In countries that have signed on to these documents – and Vietnam has signed them – people have a right to practice the religion of their choice”.
“I think that in the future we will be tightening the screws on the Canadian government. Not to hurt good projects that help Vietnamese people, but rather to put pressure on the Vietnamese government, and tell them that if Canada is to continue trading with Vietnam and giving millions of dollars for legal reform projects, then Vietnam has an obligation to bring its laws into line with international standards. I know this takes time, but I think the Canadian government has the right to say: “Our patience is running out”. Also, as Canadian taxpayers, we will be asking more and more questions about why our tax dollars are being used to repress organisations like the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam through laws and ordinances, Police surveillance and house arrest for many decades, simply for practising their beliefs”.
