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Bennett Murray

With his wizened brow, clerical collar and priestly air, Father Anton Le Ngoc Thanh seems an unlikely poster boy for political dissidence.
Yet the priest at the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in Ho Chi Minh City pulls no punches when it comes to violating political taboos.

He has been arrested 10 times, is banned from leaving the country and last year hosted a provocative rally that not only honoured veterans of the defeated South Vietnamese US puppet state, but displayed its three-striped yellow flag – an act that has landed other activists lengthy prison terms.
Yet, as Father Anton points out, being Catholic in a communist country involves suffering – plenty of it.

“[In Vietnam and China] Catholics face the same suppression: churches are demolished, priests and pastors get arrested, literary works smear Catholics,” he says.
Is Vietnam’s new religion law a smokescreen for political repression?
As a politically active Catholic, Father Anton is far from alone. While Catholics make up just 7 per cent of Vietnam’s population, they play an outsize role in the nation’s underground dissident movement.

Their numbers include some of the country’s most recognisable activists, including the imprisoned environmentalist blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, also known as Mother Mushroom, and Nguyen Van Dai, the founder of the Brotherhood for Democracy movement who went into exile in Germany in June after being convicted of sedition.
And it is not only Catholic Christians who have a reputation for protesting, but their Protestant brethren, too.
Le Dinh Luong, a pro-democracy activist and Protestant Christian from Nghe An province, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and five years of house arrest on Thursday for attempting to “overthrow the people’s administration” for, among other charges, inciting demonstrations that followed the 2016 chemical spill at the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel plant.
Vietnam lauds its war heroes, so why are so many fighting for recognition?
Catholics played a prominent part in those protests, which called for greater compensation for fishermen affected by the spill, and retaliatory attacks against them have been common, according to Luong’s daughter-in-law, Nguyen Thi Xoan, who blames government agents for a string of attacks on Catholic places of worship.
“They infiltrate the churches, demolish statues of God and the Virgin Mary, they insult the Catholics by destroying what is sacred to us,” she says.
In June, Catholics also took part in protests against a planned law on special economic zones that many Vietnamese feared would give China a territorial foothold in their country.
The demonstrations, deemed illegal, were ultimately suppressed by police – but the law has since been shelved.

The discontentment stemmed over a provision that would have, under certain circumstances, allowed foreign firms to take out 99-year leases within the special economic zones. But for many in Vietnam the 99-year provision sounded uncomfortably like Britain’s lease on its former colony Hong Kong, and while the law did not specifically mention China, it was inferred that its large neighbour to the north would take advantage of the special economic zones.
Further fuelling the fire was Vietnam’s deeply embedded anti-Chinese sentiment. In a country where every city has streets named after ancient warriors canonised as heroes for resisting Chinese expansion, fears of Beijing’s regional ambitions run deep, and Catholics are no exception.
Indeed, Vietnam’s Catholic dissidents hold a particular disdain for China, where laws surrounding the practice of religion are far more constrictive.
“Catholics know the communists are godless and they do things for their own benefit rather than the people’s interest,” says Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet, 36, from Ho Chi Minh City suburb, who was among the thousands who took to the streets in June.

Her fellow protester, Nguyen Ngoc, 36, puts it in starker terms: “Jesus Christ said you must witness the truth. Commies hate the truth.”
“Almost [all] Vietnamese hate China communists, but I don’t hate the Chinese, I sympathise with them,” Ngoc, adds. “I know that the true Catholic priests in China are trying so much to survive with commies.”
Their attitudes appear to be at odds with the official line that relations are cordial between the church and Vietnam’s Communist Party.
The lessons from Vietnam’s helmet law
Unlike in China, where the only legal Catholic association rejects the authority of the Vatican, the Vietnamese government allows the church to be in full communion with the Holy See. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s Law on Belief and Religion, passed in 2016 by the National Assembly, guarantees the right of the people to practise faiths recognised by the government, provided the religious organisations report their activities to the government.
Even so, the single party state is suspicious of any alternative power structures, says Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
“What the rulers in Hanoi don’t like is any organised movement with the backing of an organisation with the resources and ability to mobilise people,” he says. “The Catholic Church in Vietnam has both of those things.” ■


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Vietnam

Vietnam’s Catholics: cross with China, and all communists

Catholics make up just 7 per cent of Vietnam’s population, but play an outsize role in the nation’s underground dissident movement. In return, they say, churches are demolished, priests arrested and the religion smeared

Hanoi's cathedral. Photo: AFP

father anton

This picture taken from a closed-circuit television image shows Vietnamese Catholics on trial in a Hanoi court on December 8, 2008, surrounded by police guards. They are accused of disturbing public order and damaging property during rallies over a land dispute with the communist government. The two women in the front row, flanked by three female police officers, have been detained for several months while the others were earlier released on bail. The woman on the left is Ngo Thi Dung, and the woman on the right is Nguyen Thi Nhi. AFP PHOTO / AFP PHOTO / AFP

***ONE TIME USE ONLY*** 12 Apr 2012, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam --- April 12, 2012 - Ho Chi Minh City, Socialist Republic of Vietnam - Looking out the gate of Cha Tam Catholic Church in Cholon. The church is best known as the last hiding placing of Vietnamese Catholic dictator and US ally, President Ngo Dinh Diem, before he was assassinated in November 1963. Cholon is the Chinese-influenced section of Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon). It is the largest ''Chinatown'' in Vietnam. Cholon consists of the western half of District 5 as well as several adjoining neighborhoods in District 6. The Vietnamese name Cholon literally means ''big'' (lon) ''market'' (cho). Incorporated in 1879 as a city 11¬¨km from central Saigon. By the 1930s, it had expanded to the city limit of Saigon. On April 27, 1931, French colonial authorities merged the two cities to form Saigon-Cholon. In 1956, ''Cholon'' was dropped from the name and the city became known as Saigon. During the Vietnam War (called the America

In this photo taken from television shows a security man covers the mouth of the dissident Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly, 60, after he yelled "Communist court!" during his trial for spreading propaganda against the state at a local court in the central city of Hue, 30 March 2007. A Vietnamese court on 30 March sentenced dissident Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly to eight years in jail for spreading propaganda against the state. AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH Nam VIETNAM OUT NO INTERNET

Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in Ho Chi Minh City, with Catholics holding an event in honour of troops from South Vietnam, December 2017. The signs display the three red stripes and yellow background of the old South Vietnamese flag.

Vietnamese Catholics pray for the release of a lawyer accused of spreading anti-state propaganda. Photo: Reuters

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Catholics make up just 7 per cent of Vietnam’s population, but play an outsize role in the nation’s underground dissident movement. In return, they say, churches are demolished, priests arrested and the religion smeared
