In most countries, such vitriol would signal the ugliest of scandals, perhaps involving choirboys. Father Ly's crime? Challenging the government. Last month, the priest sent a letter to U.S.Congressmen urging them to reject ratification of a bilateral trade agreement until Vietnam grants greater freedom of worship. Hanoi's retaliation against Father Ly was swift, but it may be backfiring and could dim chances for the treaty's ratification. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives' powerful International Relations Committee have vowed to bring up the issue in hearings that could start as early as next month. The action against Father Lyweeks after the reported strip-search of a prominent Buddhistdissident and the government's crushing of riots in the predominantly Christian central highlandslooks to some like Hanoi is thumbing its nose at American human rights concerns. "It's just vindictive," fumes Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican on the committee who is vowing to block ratification. "It basically shows complete contemptfor human rights and for the United States."
If the religion issue is stirring up trouble in Washington, it's nothing compared with what's going on at home. By most accounts, Vietnam is in the midst of a multi-faith religious revival. Buddhist festivals are common nationwide. And Catholics take their own annual pilgrimage to a site where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared. Last year, 200,000 of Vietnam's five million Catholics attended. Like China, Vietnam tolerates religious devotion in churches that are under effective Communist Party administration, but the government appears anxious about the rise of renegade sects. The advocacy group Freedom House recently published "top secret" documents it claims are party directives aimed at suppressing evangelical Christianity, the country's smallest but fastest-growing religion. One document, "The Problem of the Enemy Exploiting Religion," describes a purported plot by "U.S. imperialists" to convert ethnic minorities and then encourage them to topple the government.
Yet Hanoi insists that every citizen has the right to religion, pointing to its millions of worshipers. Phan Thi Lan Huong is one of them. Surrounded by clouds of incense, the 59-year-old grandmother clutches her hands in prayer in front of an altar ringed with painted Buddhas. She is one of up to 20,000 who flock each day to the Chua Huong Pagodas southwest of Hanoi during the pilgrimage season. "Of course we are free to worship," she says, blinking with surprise. "The government never stops usjust those who have bad practices."
The paradox is actually codified in Vietnam's laws: every citizen is guaranteed the right to worship, but "abuse of religious rights" is punishable by up to three years in prison. According to Zachary Abuza, a Vietnam expert at Simmonds College in the U.S., it is not individual faith that Hanoi opposes, but the prospect of a nationwide structure of authority that could topple the party's monopoly on power. Hanoi has thus appointed Vietnam's Catholic bishops since 1975, annoying the Vatican, which recently elevated an exiled Vietnamese bishop to cardinal. There are dissident priests in Vietnam, like Father Ly, but more troublesome are followers of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which won't allow state advisers. "The Communist Party considers churches to be another arm of the state," Abuza says. "Any deviance is dealt with harshly."
But not as harshly as before. Father Ly may have been hauled in, "re-educated" and placed under church arrest, but he has not been jailed, as he was in 1983. There are other examples of official softening: Hanoi recently recognized the formerly banned Protestant Christian churches and the Hua Hao Buddhist sect. U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson, who flew to Washington last week to lobby for the trade agreement, believes blocking the trade accord would send the wrong message. "The greatest thing we can do for human rights," he says, "is to increase economic activity."
The Communist Party, for its part, seems to know that persecuting religions can actually make them more alluring. The Freedom House documents, which purport to be the party's strategies for suppressing evangelical Christianity, makes this observation: "The numbers grow slowly if we have a relaxed policy, and if we crack down harder, it grows faster." Even the party is realizing it's difficult to beat anyone fighting a holy war.