Zen Master: Vietnam Paid Mobs to Evict Followers
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 11, 2010
Filed at 7:21 a.m. ET
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A famous Zen master has accused Vietnam’s communist government of hiring mobs of people to violently evict his Buddhist followers from two monasteries.
Thich Nhat Hanh, who helped popularize Buddhism in the West and has sold millions of
books worldwide, has also called on Vietnam to lift restrictions on religious freedom and
respect human rights.
Nhat Hanh made the comments in a letter to his Vietnamese followers in late December,
days after they were pressured by a mob and government authorities to leave the Phuoc
Hue temple in the southern province of Lam Dong.
”Our country does not yet have true religious freedom, and the government tightly
controls the Buddhist Church machinery,” Nhat Hanh wrote in the letter, a copy of which
was obtained by The Associated Press on Monday. ”The Buddhist Church is helpless,
unable to protect its own children. This is a truth clearly seen by everyone.”
The monks and nuns had sought refuge at Phuoc Hue after being forced from the nearby
Bat Nha monastery on Sept. 27.
”In the case of Bat Nha and Phuoc Hue, government officials hired the mobs and worked
together with them,” Nhat Hanh wrote in the letter, dated ”the last days of 2009.”
At a news conference Monday, Vietnamese officials denied Nhat Hanh’s assertions.
”This is a dispute between two Buddhist factions,” said Nguyen Ngoc Dong, vice chairman
of the Lam Dong provincial government. ”We have tried our best to ensure safety and
social order for the people involved.”
The tensions in Lam Dong were the result of disagreements between Nhat Hanh’s
followers and Duc Nghi, the abbot at Bat Nha and member of the official Buddhist
Church, said Nguyen Thanh Xuan, chairman of Vietnam’s central Committee on
Religious Affairs.
But Nhat Hanh’s followers say they have been harassed because their teacher called on
Vietnamese authorities to abolish government control of religion during a 2007 meeting
with President Nguyen Minh Triet.
Asked about that accusation Monday, Trung did not directly respond. Nor did he say why
the government had not allowed Nhat Hanh’s followers to worship together in another
location, as some local representatives of the Vietnamese Buddhist Church have suggested.
In his letter to his followers, Nhat Hanh said the mobs at Phuoc Hue and Bat Nha were
hired by police and the Fatherland Front, a communist party organization. At Phuoc Hue,
they were paid 200,000 Vietnamese dong ($11) a day, he wrote.
”Where did the money come from to pay these mobs? Was it tax money?” asked Nhat
Hanh, 83, who was born in Vietnam but has lived in exile for more than four decades. He
now teaches at his Plum Village monastery in France.
Since the dispute between Nhat Hanh’s followers and the government erupted in late
June, Nhat Hanh has maintained a low profile. He wrote one previous letter praising his
followers for remaining peaceful throughout the conflict.
He did so again in the new letter, saying they had followed the example of India’s
Mohandas Gandhi, who pioneered the concept of nonviolent resistance.
They remained calm, Nhat Hanh wrote, even though some of their senior monks were
”dragged, throttled, choked and thrown into cars as if they were trash cans.”
The conflict between the government and Nhat Hanh marks a dramatic turnaround from
2005, when Nhat Hanh returned to his homeland, a move seen by many as a step
forward for religious freedom in the communist country.
In spite of the Bat Nha conflict, Nhat Hanh said in his letter that he believes Vietnam will
eventually open up its society. Young Vietnamese, he wrote, ”realize that Vietnam needs
more democracy, more citizen rights and more human rights.”
Xuan of the Committee on Religious Affairs said Nhat Hanh had ”turned his back” on
invitations to sit down and meet with Vietnamese officials to discuss the conflict at Bat
Nha. If the two sides had talked, Xuan said, they might have worked out their differences.
Nhat Hanh’s followers say he was unable to make a proposed meeting last fall because he
was in the U.S.
”Thich Nhat Hanh is willing to meet with representatives of the Vietnamese government
at any time,” Phap Linh, a monk at Plum Village, said by telephone Monday evening.
”We’ve made repeated approaches to them.”
