Vietnamese police on Tuesday arrested a Buddhist abbot and two followers – all members of the Khmer Krom ethnic minority – for his or her alleged roles in two separate incidents involving a pagoda within the nation’s south.
The almost 1.3-million sturdy Khmer Krom ethnic group stay in part of Vietnam that was as soon as southeastern Cambodia. They face discrimination in Vietnam and suspicion in Cambodia, the place they’re usually perceived not as Cambodians however as Vietnamese.
The arrested abbot, Thach Chanh Da Ra, born in 1990, is head of the Dai Tho Pagoda in Tam Binh district in Vinh Lengthy province.
He and Kim Khiem, born in 1978, had posted allegedly slandering and insulting movies on social media and have been charged with “abusing the rights to democratic freedom,” in violation of Article 331, a regulation that rights teams have stated is vaguely written and infrequently used to stifle dissent.
Ra was dismissed from the government-recognized Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in December.
Police additionally arrested Thach Ve Sanal, one other member of the pagoda, on expenses of “illegally arresting, holding, or detaining individuals,” for his alleged function in an incident that occurred when a job pressure entered the pagoda to research on Nov. 22, 2023.
The arrests passed off only a week after authorities sentenced two different Khmer Krom to jail for “abusing democratic freedoms,” and a few month after a 3rd was given three-and-a-half years on the identical cost.
False accusations
The federal government’s accusations in regards to the three males arrested Tuesday are fabricated, Duong Khai, a monk on the pagoda, instructed RFA Vietnamese.
“They distorted and slandered us, not the opposite method round,” he stated. “They always come to harass us and disrupt safety and public order. They disturbed our indigenous Khmer Krom group and gave us no days of peace.”
Khai stated that the Vietnamese authorities arrest whoever they dislike, particularly in the event that they dare to talk up and inform the reality in regards to the authorities’s wrongdoings.
“They arrested Kim Khiem as a result of he had spoken out about their repression (of Khmer Krom,)” he stated. “As for the abbot, Thach Chanh Da Ra, the authorities have repeatedly harassed (him) because the tree-cutting incident.”
Greater than a yr in the past, the Buddhist followers elected Ra to exchange the previous abbot of the pagoda, Thach Xuoi, as a result of they believed Xuoi had colluded with authorities to chop down a 700-year-old tree within the pagoda that had develop into a group image.
Ra and Khiem have been arrested once they have been returning to the pagoda after conducting companies elsewhere, the monk stated.
Worldwide condemnation
The Vietnamese authorities is unfairly concentrating on Ra as a method to pressure the pagoda to affix the formally acknowledged Sangha, the U.S.-based Kampuchea Krom Khmers Federation stated in a press launch Tuesday.
The group known as on authorities to drop all expenses and launch all three of the arrested individuals, and stated the United Nations and the worldwide group ought to condemn Vietnam – a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council – for its suppression of spiritual freedom.
RFA tried to contact the Vietnamese Ministry of Overseas Affairs, and the Embassy of Vietnam in Cambodia for remark however acquired no response.
The costs in opposition to Ra are “bogus” in response to Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.
“The Vietnamese authorities is intentionally harassing, discriminating in opposition to, and abusing the Khmer Krom leaders who rise up for his or her language, tradition, and Theravadan Buddhism, and this crackdown is extending to senior Buddhist monks asserting their proper to freedom of faith and perception,” Robertson stated.
He stated that Ra’s arrest confirmed that authorities officers don’t have any respect for the non secular beliefs of the Khmer Krom.
Robertson stated that the U.S. Division of State ought to acknowledge the severity of Vietnam’s repression and designate it a rustic of specific concern for its violations of spiritual freedom.
Translated by Anna Vu and Samean Yun. Edited by Eugene Whong.
