Indigenous people are not allowed to celebrate Christmas

Several thousand indigenous people in Vietnam are being systematically bullied by soldiers to prevent them from participating in the Christmas services. This was reported on Thursday by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in Göttingen. In 62 towns in the provinces of Dak Lak, Dak Nong and Gia Lai in the central highlands soldiers have according to information given to the GfbV been stationed there since 28th November 2005. The soldiers threatened the people with prison and torture if they went to Christmas services.

"The new repression against Christian indigenous people shows that Vietnam is still not prepared to grant the religious freedom guaranteed in the constitution”, criticised the GfbV Asia expert Ulrich Delius. Christian indigenous people, particularly those living in new settlements, have in recent years been regularly prevented or disturbed by soldiers.

The hope of many Protestant Christians in Vietnam that the suppression of religious freedom would after the official recognition of the Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV) in 2001 soon be lifted has not so far been fulfilled. On the one hand the State Committee for Religious Affairs decided with a decree in 2003 that the Protestant belief should be "normalised” in the area of the ethnic minorities in the central highlands, so that 18 of the 33 SECV communities could be registered. The church was able to hold its second national congress in March 2005 and one month later a bible school could open for the first time in the province of Gia Lai. On the other hand in the neighbouring province of Dak Lak a similar initiative of the SECV failed on account of the resistance of the local authorities.

"The present military operations in the central highlands show that the religious freedom of the indigenous people is still massively suppressed in spite of the efforts of the communities” said Delius. "Anyone practising his religion without being registered risks years in prison.” So since November 2005 at least 32 of the indigenous people known to the GfbV have been arrested because they preached in their villages or refused to make a written declaration of their entry to the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN). The ECVN is after the SECV the second Protestant Church of Vietnam recognized by the state. It expresses even less criticism of the suppression of the freedom of religion than the SECV and is therefore rejected by most of the indigenous people.

Only 1.5 million Vietnamese hold the Protestant confession. About seven million are Catholic. Most of the Protestants are indigenous people. They suffer both from the suppression of their religious freedom and from the discrimination and infringement of their traditional land rights. Thousands are being driven from their land on account of coffee plantations. Their homeland is one of the most important coffee producers today for Germany.