There are about 6 million Catholics in Vietnam today (about 8 percent of the population). They are the biggest religious minority in a nation which has been ruled in its entirety by a Communist government since 1975. Like all Communist regimes, Vietnam had its “re-education” camps. The regime has also long harassed the Catholic Church. There is no greater symbol of this than the late Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, widely regarded as a modern saint. Before exiling him, the regime imprisoned him for 13 years, nine of which were spent in solitary confinement.
Some of the reasons for this treatment of Vietnam’s Catholic Church are historical. Vietnam’s rulers are acutely aware that Catholics were among the most committed anti-Communist Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Many Vietnamese also identified Catholicism with French colonial rule.
This background, however, is of marginal significance in explaining the violent crackdown presently being experienced by Catholics throughout Vietnam. Put simply, it’s about government corruption.
As Vietnam’s Catholic bishops wrote in 2008, corruption is a huge problem in Vietnam. This is true of any country where the state is not constrained by the rule of law and the primary incentives for economic gain lie in taking others’ property rather than creating wealth through entrepreneurship. Vietnam, however, is listed by Transparency International as one of the world’s most corrupt countries.
The most recent self-enrichment scheme of Vietnam’s Communist political class has been to “requisition” peasants’ land which they then re-sell to the highest bidder, while quietly taking their “cut” of the action. The Church has long taken the peasants’ side in these matters. The bishops’ statement of last year insisted that private property rights must be respected.
Now Church property is increasingly the target. In late 2008, for example, Vinh Long provincial officials announced their intention to “appropriate” the land of a convent of nuns which also functioned as an orphanage in order to build a hotel. More recently, land in Hanoi that the government itself acknowledges has been owned by a Catholic monastery since 1928 was simply given over by the state for residential construction.
Please read the rest of the article here:
Corruption, Communism, and Catholicism in Vietnam – The Acton Institute.
