Vietnam Floats Draconian New Religion Decrees

 Posted at Morning Star News:

Proposed high fines, shutdowns and onerous regulations submitted for feedback.

HANOI, Vietnam (Morning Star News) – When the “Government of Vietnam” posted two draft religion decrees the first week of June, even ranking staff members of the Government Bureau of Religious Affairs were taken by surprise and encouraged religious leaders to strongly object.

The decrees with ancillary documents were posted online for input by government departments and the public. The document dump was 151 pages.

One draft decree would take the place of Decree 162/2017, which provided implementation guidelines for the penultimate Law on Belief and Religion (LBR) that went into effect Jan. 1, 2018. After three years, the government authors of the draft decrees admit to shortcomings in the original implementation decree and offer this attempt to fix them. In practice the revisions would only tighten control.

Most concerning is a draft decree stipulating remedies and punishments for administrative infractions of the existing LBR and other rules. It is already nicknamed the “Punishment Degree.” The original such draft decree floated three years ago received such a negative response that it was never passed or enforced. The current draft is hardly better.

One Vietnamese analyst put it this way: “If you start with something which is very bad at its core, any additions to it can only be bad too.”

He referred to Vietnam’s record on human rights, especially religious freedom, internationally known to be very deficient.

“Tinkering with the margins will not change the rotten core,” the analyst concluded.

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