Help Bat Nha Monastery

Dear President Sarkozy,

I write to you on behalf of the monks and nuns of Bat Nha, Vietnam, because they have no voice. The Vietnamese Government is forcing this community of 400 monks and nuns to abandon their way of life, their practice of peace, service and non-violence; they have been given a deadline of the 31st of December to disband. We need your help.

Living as a community is our spiritual life, and to break the community is to break our spiritual life. This is the greatest danger we face. The destruction of this community represents a tragic loss for traditional Vietnamese culture, and perhaps for the world.
Beginning August 7th, 2008, our community has been subjected to a steadily increasing campaign of persecution and harassment aimed at ending the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam. On the 27th of September 2009, the community was violently expelled from their home monastery, Bat Nha, in the central highlands of Vietnam. They have taken refuge in the nearby temple of Phuoc Hue in Bao Loc, but the threats, harassment and psychological torture have followed them there. In recent days a government-directed mob took the temple by storm, while government officials forced the abbot under extreme duress to withdraw his protection and sign a document stating that the monks and nuns must leave by the 31st December. The monks and nuns have nowhere to go; there is no place safe — they can bear no more.

These actions violate Vietnamese law and contradict Vietnam’s commitments to honour human rights and freedom of religion. We understand that because of many difficulties, and the current political and economic situation of Vietnam, the government does not have the capacity to protect us. We know that in this moment, they are not able to support our community. But we believe that the situation in Vietnam may change in time, if the fear and misunderstanding about our community can be removed.

In Vietnam, we can no longer withstand the government’s intense pressure to disperse, but we cannot forsake our community, our spiritual life — we must try to find a way stay together.  We turn to you to ask for temporary asylum in France so that we can remain together until we have a legal place to practice in our own country.

For my people, to destroy a monastic community is a terrible misfortune, and we do not want this to happen. We are certain that many people in the government want to prevent this catastrophe but are not yet in a position to act. We humbly ask for your help, for protection and temporary refuge, to wait for the acceptance and protection of our own government, at which point we will immediately return, as a community, to Vietnam.  To help make this possible, an international network of friends and supporters, including monastic communities in Europe and the United States, is ready to offer shelter as well as material and financial support.

We place our trust in you.

Sincerely,

Thich Trung Hai

On behalf of the monks and nuns of Bat Nha Monastery

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