Starting Points: Buddhists

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Dec 18, 2009

Vietnam: End Attacks on Bat Nha Buddhists

EU, Other Donors Should Condemn Officials’ Complicity in Pagoda Siege

December 16, 2009

(New York) - Heavy-handed tactics by Vietnam's central government to disband followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a prominent Buddhist monk who has called for religious reforms, illustrate Vietnam's ongoing contempt for human rights and religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said today.

For three days, beginning December 9, 2009, orchestrated mobs that included undercover police and local communist party officials terrorized and assaulted several hundred monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue pagoda in central Lam Dong province. Phuoc Hue's abbot has provided sanctuary to the monastics since late September, when police and civilian mobs violently expelled them from their own monastery of Bat Nha, located in the same commune.

During last week's attack, mobs targeted Phuoc Hue's abbot, threatening and haranguing him until they finally forced his consent to a December 31 deadline for the Bat Nha monastics to vacate the pagoda.

Image by nd_architecture_library via Flickr

"Vietnam's international donors should insist that the government halt the attacks on the monks and nuns in Lam Dong, allow them to practice their religion, and prevent any further violent expulsions," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "And they should make clear they will keep close tabs on the situation."

The three-day vigilante assault on Phuoc Hue disrupted a December 9 European Union (EU) fact-finding mission to the pagoda, which was followed by an EU human rights dialogue with Vietnam on December 11. A European Parliament resolution passed in late November called on Vietnam to respect religious freedom and condemned the harassment and persecution of Buddhists in Lam Dong, as well as of followers of other religions and branches of Buddhism.

The EU, one of Vietnam's largest donors, pledged US $1 billion in aid to Vietnam at a donor conference in early December. Sweden - the current EU president - and other donors have pressed Vietnam to lift its restrictions on independent media, religious freedom, and peaceful dissent. A 1995 EU-Vietnam Cooperation Agreement affirms that respect for human rights and democratic principles is the basis for the cooperation.

"The vigilante action to prevent diplomats from meeting with the monks and nuns is a real slap in the face to the EU," Pearson said. "The EU needs to make clear that it has leverage and will use it."

Over the past year, government officials have intensified efforts to disband the community of young monks and nuns that until September was based at a meditation center at Bat Nha monastery established by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2005. Authorities began to take steps to close the center after Thich Nhat Hanh urged the government in 2007 to ease its restrictions on religious freedom.

Thich Nhat Hanh first drew international attention in the 1960s as a leader of South Vietnamese Buddhists opposed to the US war in Vietnam, critical of all sides to the conflict. He continued his anti-war activities from exile in France after he left the country in 1965. The government barred him from returning as he increasingly took on human rights issues, including the plight of the thousands of boat people who fled Vietnam after the communist victory in 1975 and the persecution of Buddhist clergy and patriarchs.

Since the September eviction at Bat Nha, authorities have relentlessly harassed and pressured the Bat Nha Buddhists to vacate Phuoc Hue and other pagodas that took them in, periodically cutting electricity and water and barring local lay people from providing food and supplies. According to government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, in late November local officials were ordered to begin organizing civilians to demonstrate against the monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue, demand the expulsion of the pagoda's abbot, and pressure the monks and nuns to return to their home provinces.

Mob action at Phuoc Hue

On December 9, more than 100 people marched into Phuoc Hue pagoda. Many wore motorcycle helmets, baseball caps, and dust masks - common attire on Vietnam's roadways but not inside Buddhist temples. Coordinated by whistle-blowing leaders, the crowds dragged the abbot out of his room, shouting insults, and demanding that he expel the Bat Nha Buddhists. Video footage captured by some of the monastics show the attackers shoving aside monks and nuns trying to protect the abbot, and assaulting others trying to take photographs.

The crowds, which swelled to 200 people at times over the course of the three days, included people brought in from as far away as Nam Dinh province - 1500 km north of Lam Dong - who told observers they had been mobilized by government officials for three days' work, at 200,000 dong (US $11) a day.

Police cordoned off the streets around the pagoda, with officers posted at the homes of townspeople who had been providing food to the monks and nuns, to prevent them from leaving their homes. The police did nothing to stop the mobs - some armed with hammers and sticks - from attempting to break down the door to the abbot's room, overrunning the pagoda, and terrorizing the monks and nuns. When nuns sat down to pray and chant civilians loomed over them, pulling at their ears and shouting so close to their faces that the nuns had to wipe away the spit.

Leaders of the mob, who included local cadre from party-controlled mass organizations, used megaphones to blast the sounds of police sirens and intensely loud electronic dance music into the pagoda compound. In desperation, the monks began ringing the temple bell constantly to sound an alarm. An ambulance was parked in front of the pagoda.

The provincial head of a special police unit within the Ministry of Public Security called A41 was present during the three days of mob activity. Often called the "religious police," A41 monitors groups the government considers to be religious "extremists" throughout Vietnam.

"What's disturbing about this mob attack is that the Vietnamese government not only failed to protect its own citizens, but that the authorities actively participated in the abuses," said Pearson.

More than half of the Bat Nha monastics remaining at Phuoc Hue are young Vietnamese women recently ordained as nuns. "The nuns don't know where to go - they feel trapped now," one observer told Human Rights Watch. "The whole experience was very traumatic - some were pushed, shoved, spit upon, and even assaulted. Their community has been spiritually killed. They are afraid to be split up and sent back to their home provinces - they want to stay together, in a safe place."

The December 31 eviction deadline for the young monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue coincides with an International Conference on Buddhist women hosted by the Vietnamese government in Ho Chi Minh City. "It's ironic that as young nuns and monks face the possibility of another violent eviction on December 31, participants at a government-hosted international Buddhist conference in Vietnam will be discussing the role of female Buddhists in preventing conflicts and violence," said Pearson.

Orchestrated mob action is not a new phenomenon in Vietnam, particularly in remote "hot spots," where authorities want to prevent any interaction between local communities and international visitors such as diplomats and journalists.

"What was different in Lam Dong is that diplomats saw with their own eyes government-orchestrated suppression of religious freedom and basic rights," Pearson said. "As such, the EU is uniquely placed to convey its strong concerns to the Vietnamese government about what happened."

Human Rights Watch has obtained copies of a series of directives from the government, ruling Communist Party, and government-appointed Buddhist officials that appear to order the assault on the pagoda.

A November 26 directive from the government's Religious Affairs Committee instructed local Buddhist officials and the Communist People's Committee to "mobilize" the Bat Nha Buddhists to return to their "proper residences" in their home provinces. Similar directives were issued by the official Vietnam Buddhist Church - a government-appointed body - on November 30, and by the local People's Committee on December 7.

"The EU and other donors should make it clear that they hold the Vietnamese government responsible for last week's events in Lam Dong," Pearson said. "Vietnam's donors need to voice their strong concerns, monitor the situation very closely, and do their best to be physically present at Phuoc Hue pagoda on the December 31 eviction deadline."

Sep 5, 2009

Southern Thailand’s Turmoil Grows - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By THOMAS FULLER

PAKA LUE SONG, Thailand — The soldiers patrolling this hamlet racked by insurgent violence measure their progress modestly: two years ago, when villagers saw them coming, they closed their shutters. Now, they say, most residents peer out of their wood-frame houses and offer strained smiles.

“The local people have started to open their hearts,” said Capt. Niran Chaisalih, the leader of a government paramilitary force garrisoned at the village school.

Paka Lue Song, only a 15-minute drive from the provincial capital, Pattani, is a starting point for Thailand’s influx of troops into the country’s troubled southern provinces, where ethnic Malay Muslims are battling for autonomy from Thailand’s Buddhist majority.

The number of people in security forces, including the army, the police and militias, in the region has doubled over the past two years to about 60,000, said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a leading expert on the insurgency and the associate dean at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani.

The huge increase in security forces initially helped reduce the violence as well as the death toll, which fell by 40 percent last year. But the number of killings has risen in recent months. More than 330 people have been killed so far this year, compared with 285 in the same period last year. Among the dead are civilians — including many Malays — soldiers and insurgents.

There have been so many killings in the three southern provinces — about 3,500 since 2004 — that the government began distributing a glossy brochure last year guiding victims’ families through the process of applying for government compensation.

Although the insurgency has been active for decades in the south, the current phase is considered particularly dangerous because the militants appear to have more of an Islamist agenda and because apparently sectarian attacks have strained the mutual tolerance between Buddhists and Muslims. It also comes at a time of deep political turmoil and social unease in Thailand that has hobbled several governments in the last three years and last year drove away many of the tourists who help sustain the country’s economy.

The surge in troops is palpable across the three southern provinces, only a few hours’ drive from Thailand’s main tourist beaches. There is now the equivalent of one soldier or police officer for every seven households. Soldiers in Humvees patrol the main roads, and police and military checkpoints screen motorists every few miles.

Sa-nguan Indrarak, the president of a federation of schoolteachers in the south, questions whether the army’s presence has been worth the $3.2 billion that the government has spent in the south over the past five years. (Teachers, obvious symbols of the Thai state, have been prime targets in the insurgency, with 95 killed since 2004.) Troops should leave and the government should train local security forces, who have a better understanding of the terrain, Mr. Sa-nguan argues.

Soldiers are resented in part because they behave inappropriately around both mosques and Buddhist temples, drinking, dancing and flirting, he said. But there have also been reports of human rights abuses; in January, Amnesty International published a report saying security forces “systemically engage in torture” — including using electric shocks — in their attempts to gather information and to force communities into withholding or withdrawing support for the rebels.

The insurgency has been distinct from other rebel movements in the region because the perpetrators remain shadowy, ill-defined groups that do not claim responsibility for the violence. Experts say they believe that the aims of the groups, among them the Pattani Islamic Mujahedeen Movement and the National Revolution Front-Coordinate, are to drive Buddhists from the area, discredit the government and put into place strict Islamic laws.

Although they say they believe that some financing for the groups comes from abroad, several counterterrorism experts in Thailand and elsewhere discount significant connections with other militant movements, like Al Qaeda and the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah. The movement here, they say, appears to involve a localized struggle over territory and control overlaid with historical resentment over the domination of the Thai state.

Malay Muslims make up about 80 percent of the 1.7 million people living in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala Provinces.

The ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup in 2006 raised hopes that the generals who took over, including several senior Muslim officials, would be more conciliatory than Mr. Thaksin, who had blamed bandits for the violence and oversaw a hard-line policy toward the area. But despite an unprecedented apology for Mr. Thaksin’s iron-fisted policies by a military-installed prime minister, the insurgency has ground on.

In Paka Lue Song, a village considered dangerous enough that local journalists refuse to enter it, army medics are trying to win over villagers by giving them free medical treatment. As soldiers prepared to walk through the village on a recent day, one raised the antenna of a radio to hear a dispatcher issue a bulletin: a police officer had been ambushed in Yala Province.

The soldiers proceeded on their mission, handing out vitamin C to children.

Second Lt. Pongpayap Petwisai, a 27-year-old army doctor, walked through the village prescribing medication for eye infections, dispensing balms for aching muscles and monitoring blood pressure.

“What we are trying to do is get people on our side,” said Dr. Pongpayap, who was partly inspired to become a doctor by the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.”

More recently, the government has also stepped up its program of providing weapons to local militias and “village guards,” especially in Buddhist enclaves. These volunteers now number about 71,000, according to Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, who monitors the insurgency for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent deadly conflicts.

She said she feared that the program could backfire, leading to vigilante killings if the weapons fell into the wrong hands.

Those who cooperate with the military are already at risk of being attacked by insurgents.

In Paka Lue Song, Dr. Pongpayap examined the injured hand of Gade Yusoh, a 57-year-old rubber tapper who soldiers said had been helpful to them.

Gunmen suspected of being insurgents fired into Mr. Gade’s house one evening three months ago while he was watching television. “I’m not afraid,” he said. His nervous laugh suggested otherwise.

It remains unclear if the programs aimed at winning the hearts and minds of villagers — a standard counterinsurgency practice — are working. When this reporter toured a neighboring village without the army medical team, local officials heaped scorn on the government initiative.

“They just want a photo opportunity,” said one local government official, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution by the army. Other criticism has been more public. Outside a village Dr. Pongpayap visited, graffiti appeared the day after.

“Don’t come back here,” it said. “If you shoot one of us, we will shoot two of you.”

Nice Pojanamesbaanstit contributed reporting.