![\"AFP](\"..\/images\/AFP.gif\")
<\/a> Agence France Presse<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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HANOI, Nov 9 (AFP) – Communist Vietnam protested Wednesday at a US State Department decision to keep it on a blacklist of countries deemed to be violators of religious freedom.<\/p>\n
Washington had some good words for Vietnam in the annual State Department report on religious freedom released Tuesday but was not convinced Hanoi had done enough to merit removal from the list.<\/p>\n
The report notably cited the \u201clack of normalized relations\u201d with several religious groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe protest the US decision to continue listing Vietnam among \u2018countries of particular concern\u2019 on religious freedom,\u201d said foreign ministry spokesman Le Dung.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a wrong decision, which does not correctly reflect the situation of religious freedom in Vietnam,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said governments of the eight blacklisted nations — China, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Sudan are the others \u2013- \u201chave engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom over the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vietnam was added to the blacklist last year but the State Department entered into an \u201cagreement\u201d with Hanoi in May this year adressing a number of important concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are committed to seeking improvements in each of these countries, improvements like those we have actually seen in Vietnam which have been further advanced by agreement on religious freedom that our governments signed just this last May,\u201d Rice said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Vietnam\u2019s record of improvement continues, it would enable us to eventually remove Vietnam from our list of countries of particular concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Hanford, US envoy for international religious freedom, noted that Vietnam had released 14 prominent prisoners and eased registration and reopening of some of the churches previously closed in the Central Highlands region, home to ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n
He said Washington was \u201cparticularly encouraged by the promulgation of new laws governing religious activities and efforts to ensure their implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting the US acknowledgement of \u201cpositive developments\u201d, the Vietnamese spokesman urged Washington \u201cto have a more realistic view and arrive at a correct decision … in order not to upset the recent positive progress in bilateral ties.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Vo Van Ai, director of the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau, welcomed the US decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cVietnam\u2019s claims to respect religious freedoms are \u2018for export only\u2019,\u201d he said in a statement faxed to AFP. \u201cIn reality, the government pursues a consistent policy of repression against all independent religious communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Agence France Presse HANOI, Nov 9 (AFP) – Communist Vietnam protested Wednesday at a US State Department decision to keep it on a blacklist of countries deemed to be violators of religious freedom. Washington had some good words for Vietnam in the annual State Department report on religious freedom released Tuesday but was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-press-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}