Vietnam’s new religion decree, promulgated on Dec. 29 and effective on March 30, considerably adds to the crush of demands on religion while “elaborating some Articles and measures for execution of the Law on Religion and Folk Belief” of 2016, reported Morning Star News. The Decree 95 was recently released in both Vietnamese and an official English translation.
When the LRB came into effect on Jan. 1, 2018, it was followed by two draft decrees which were circulated for public comment. Domestic and international reaction to implementation Decree 162 was extremely harsh, but with modest revision it was quietly put into effect anyway in 2019.
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The second draft decree, which became known pejoratively as the “punishment decree,” consisted of a multi-page schedule of administrative fines and harsher consequences for infractions of virtually all provisions of the LRB.
“It was so amateur and misguided that it made the purpose of the LRB look like it existed to generate funds for the government, certainly not to expand religious freedom,” Morning Star News noted in its report. “It was so scorned that it quietly disappeared.”
But the intent of the LRB and the two ancillary decrees, which firmly pointed in the direction of ever more control over religion, did not, they noted.
The highly influential Vu Chien Thang, deputy minister of Home Affairs and long-time head of the Government Committee of Religious Affairs, insisted the religion legislation needed strong enforcement measures. And now we have them.
Decree 95 appeared with less than three months to its effective date and without any public consultation. There is some speculation that it was rapidly promulgated to help Vietnam get off the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List for religious freedom violators. If that’s the case, it will certainly fail.
Decree 95 replaces Decree 162 and the punishment decree. It contains 33 articles, eight more than Decree 162. Decree 95 also adds three more forms to the already 47 prescribed for asking permission for and reporting on religious activities. The decree and attached forms total 98 pages!
New additions
The two most important additions to Decree 162 are as follows:
1) Measures on shutting down and rehabilitating activities of religious organizations and religious education institutions, and
2) Requirements for local fundraising and financial management, and, for the first time, highly detailed procedures necessary for receiving foreign aid and forms for reporting on it, both finances and goods in-kind.
Also included are new requirements for promptly reporting personnel and location changes by foreign religious congregations and local congregations. These additions make the required scrutiny and threats of Decree 95 even heavier than Decree 162.
With the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) and government still frozen in the “religious freedom by management and administrative control” mindset, the way forward is ever more rules. With its 50 model forms for asking permissions and reporting, Decree 95 certainly maintains the control of the “ask and receive” bargain long offered to religious groups. By clarifying what religious groups have to do or comply with, authorities seem to rationalize that they will be seen as granting more “freedom.”
From an international religious freedom perspective, however, each new regulation is in fact a diminution of the almost unqualified freedom offered in Article 24 of Vietnam’s 2013 constitution and can be used as a sharp tool to exercise control over religion, Morning Star News noted.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written and originally published by Morning Star News.
