FOR YOUR INFORMATION

July 29, 2013 | By Katrina Lantos Swett

The following appeared in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs on July 24, 2013:

On July 25, Vietnam"s President Truong Tan Sang meets President Obama at the White House, even as continued violations of religious freedom and related human rights back in Vietnam negatively complicate the relationship between our two countries.

As documented in this year"s Annual Report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Vietnam"s government shows no signs of loosening its iron grip over religious activities across the nation, as it continues to severely restrict independent religious practice and repress individuals and groups it deems a challenge to its authority. The government deploys a specialized religious police force and uses ill-defined national security laws to suppress independent Buddhist, Protestant, Hoa Hao, and Cao Dai practices, while aiming to stifle the growth of ethnic minority Protestantism and Catholicism through violence, discrimination, and compulsory renunciations of faith.

The regime also threatens, intimidates, detains, sentences, and disbars lawyers who have defended human rights by representing religious communities or human rights and religious freedom advocates in cases against the state. In December 2012, Vietnamese authorities arrested Le Quoc Quan, an attorney and human rights defender who has helped Vietnamese Catholics in seeking return of church properties. They are now holding Mr. Quan incommunicado in Hoa Lo Prison and denying him access to his own lawyer or family. In 2010, Dr. Cu Huy Ha Vu was charged with propaganda against the state after representing the villagers of Con Dau against the authorities" land grab of their village and cemetery. Despite being in poor health, he is now serving a seven-year sentence due to other activities.

Other individuals detained for their religious practice or religious freedom advocacy include Nguyen Cong Chinh, Bui Van Tham, Thuy Vo Thi Thu, Nguyen Van Thanh, Phan Ngoc Tuan, Nguyen Trung Ton, Nguyen Van Lia, Tran Hoi An, Ksor Y Du, Kpa Y Ko, Father Nguyen Van Ly, and Thich Quang Do.

Given these systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief, USCIRF continues to recommend to our State Department that Vietnam be designated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), marking it among the worst religious freedom abusers in the world. Though the Commission has been making this recommendation since 2001, the State Department has only recognized Vietnam as a CPC in 2004 and 2005, removing the designation in 2006 because of advances made toward fulfilling a binding agreement.

Following the initial designation of Vietnam as a CPC and increased American and international attention, Vietnam took measured steps to improve religious freedom conditions, including enacting a law banning forced renunciations of faith and releasing dozens of individuals imprisoned in connection with religion or belief. These steps contradict the oft-repeated claim that linking human rights and religious freedom concerns to our bilateral relationship will inevitably be counterproductive. Clearly, if Vietnam reverses its current course and begins again to improve religious freedom conditions, it can only strengthen the bond between our countries and increase goodwill between our peoples.

This Thursday"s state visit with President Truong Tan Sang provides President Obama with an ideal chance to communicate this vital message to Vietnam, for the sake of the fundamental rights of the Vietnamese people and the benefit of our bilateral relationship.

Katrina Lantos Swett is a Commissioner at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) who has just completed her term as USCIRF"s Chair.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at (202) 523-3258 or [email protected].

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

July 26, 2013 | By Robert P. George and Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 25, 2013

A common theory about freedom of religion suggests that such a value is grounded in a modus vivendi, or compromise: People agree to respect each other"s freedom in order to avoid religiously motivated strife. But the modus vivendi theory obscures the deep ground of principle on which the right of religious liberty rests and the true reasons for respecting the religious freedom of others.

As a Republican and a Democrat on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, we are committed, with our colleagues, to advancing religious liberty around the globe. One of our goals is to make clear that such liberty is not simply a matter of sensible social compromise, or just an American ideal or a Western value, but an essential element of human dignity.

We humans reflect on our condition and inquire into the origins of the cosmos and the meaning of our lives. We seek answers to the deepest questions: Where do we come from? What is our destiny? Is there a transcendent source of meaning and value? Is there a "higher law” that obliges us to rise above our personal interests and desires in order to "do unto others as we would have them do unto us”?

Many of us grasp the point of this quest because we experience ourselves as more than merely material beings tied to nature"s necessities. Our most immediate and intimate experiences of ourselves are as free and rational creatures-agents capable of choosing, thus helping to shape our world. We sense that we are responsible for our own actions, and we judge that others, by the same token, are responsible for theirs.

Some argue that this experience is illusory, and that we are determined in our actions purely by material causes. But these arguments themselves presuppose that the quest to understand the truth about the human condition is a deeply worthy one. They honor the questions that give rise to the quest, even in proposing answers meant to establish its futility.

To respect fundamental human rights is to favor and honor the person who is protected by those rights-including the rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion.

To respect the person is to favor human flourishing in its many dimensions. For those who regard humans not just as material beings but also as spiritual ones-free, rational and responsible-it is obvious that their spiritual well-being is no less important than their physical, psychological, intellectual, social and moral well-being.

It should be equally obvious that respect for the flourishing of people requires respect for their freedom-as individuals and together with others in community-to address the deepest questions of human existence and meaning. This allows them to lead lives of authenticity and integrity by fulfilling what they conscientiously believe to be their religious and moral duties.

Religious faith by its nature must be free. A coerced "faith” is no faith at all. Compulsion can cause a person to manifest the outward signs of belief or unbelief. It cannot produce the interior acts of intellect and will that constitute genuine faith.

Coercion in the cause of belief, whether religious or secular, produces not genuine conviction, but pretense and inauthenticity. It is therefore essential that religious freedom include the right to change one"s beliefs and religious affiliation. It also includes the right to witness to one"s beliefs in public as well as private, and to act-while respecting the equal right of others to do the same-on one"s religiously inspired convictions in carrying out the duties of citizenship. Religious liberty includes a heavy presumption against being coerced to act contrary to one"s sense of religious duty. This is a presumption that can be overridden only when necessary to achieve an essential public interest and when no less-restrictive alternative exists.

Because the freedom to live according to one"s beliefs is so integral to human flourishing, the full protections of religious liberty must extend to all-even to those whose answers to the deepest questions reject belief in the transcendent.

The British religious thinker John Henry Newman observed in 1874 that "conscience has rights because it has duties.” We honor the rights of conscience in matters of faith because people must be free to fulfill what they believe to be their solemn duties.

Since America"s founding, the country has honored this form of liberty. Today, when religious freedom in many parts of the world is under siege, one of the aims of U.S. foreign policy should be to combat such intolerance-not just because religious freedom reduces the risk of sectarian conflict, but more fundamentally because it protects the liberty that is central to human dignity.

Mr. George is a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Ms. Swett is president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice. They are, respectively, chairman and vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at (202) 523-3258 or [email protected].

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON D.C. -- The Kazakh government reportedly soon will try two activists for their religious freedom-related activities. Atheist blogger Aleksandr Kharlamov, 63, had been held for four months in a psychiatric hospital and remains imprisoned allegedly for "inciting religious hatred.” Bakhytzhan Kashkumbaev, 66, who leads the Grace Church in the Kazakh capital of Astana was arrested in May 2013 allegedly for "intentionally inflicting serious harm to health.”

"Kazakhstan, once a leader in Central Asia on freedom of religion or belief, is a leader no more,” said Robert P. George, Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). "These two cases, along with the harsh application of highly restrictive laws adopted two years ago, have damaged Kazakhstan's international standing and have resulted in many Kazakh citizens' religious freedoms being violated.”

After three months in psychiatric detention and prison, Kharlamov faces trial in the city of Ridder in the East Kazakhstan Region. He was arrested on March 14, 2013, after "expert analysis" found that 28 of 36 of his writings "have negative information aimed at inciting religious hatred and discord." Kazakh human rights advocates deny these allegations. Kharlamov faces a possible seven-year prison term, and reportedly has lost 44 pounds since his imprisonment.

The criminal case brought against Pastor Kashkumbaev in October 2012 was "for causing considerable harm to the psychological health" of a church member. This charge carries a possible prison term of between three to seven years. A possible motive for the pastor's arrest is that he is an ethnic Kazakh - as is the majority of his congregation. He was arrested in May 2013 and is in pre-trial detention until August 17, 2013. He will be sent to Almaty for psychiatric evaluation; he is now fasting to protest his treatment. Criminal charges are pending and his trial will begin soon.

"Kazakh President Nazarbayev promotes his country's record of religious tolerance, but the Kashkumbaev and Kharlamov cases reveal a different truth,” USCIRF Chair George stated. "The use of forcible psychiatric exams is reminiscent of the worst methods that the Soviets used against dissidents. Both these men should be released immediately and all charges against them dropped.”

In its 2013 Annual Report, USCIRF detailed a decline in religious freedom protections in Kazakhstan over the past five years. The Kazakh government has enforced its 2011 religion law's ban on unregistered religious activity, through police raids, detentions, and major fines. The law's onerous registration requirements have also led to a sharp drop in the number of registered religious groups, both Muslim and Protestant. Due to such concerns, USCIRF for the first time has placed Kazakhstan on its Tier 2 list of those countries where religious freedom restrictions are on the threshold of those of a Country of Particular Concern.