FM Spokeswoman on religious activities in Vietnam
On April 13,2001, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Ms. Phan Thuy Thanh answers question from AFP: What is Vietnam's reaction to accusations by Vietnam Commission on Human Rights in Geneva that "Vietnam is systematically legalizing religious repression"?
Answer:
Freedom to adhere to or not to adhere to a religion or religious belief of all Vietnamese citizens is clearly stipulated in Vietnamese laws and ensured in practice.
Over the past 20 years, the number of Catholic followers has nearly doubled. There is an increasing number of newly-built, repaired and restored churches, pagodas and places of worship. Across the country, there are about 14,000 Buddhist temples, 6,000 Catholic churches, 5,000 Protestant churches, 1,000 Cao Dai temples, 200 Hoa Hao temples, 89 Islamic mosques and tens of thousands of communal houses, shrines, and temples dedicated to popular cult. Opening new religious schools, training clergy and sending religious students overseas for education have been on the increase. Annual Christmas celebrations and pilgrimages to the Perfume Pagoda are freely attended by tens of thousands of Catholic and Buddhist followers. The festivals held in La Vang in 1998 and 1999 were attended by thousands of religious followers.
Given such a vivid reality who can believe in the rhetoric of the above mentioned Commission? It is doing an useless job of deliberately slandering Vietnam.
