Beatings, Church raids, arrests, forbidding Christmas Mass, bulldozing monasteries – are some of the violent incidents inflicted on Christians by authorities in Vietnam in a disturbed Christmas.

An estimate of 2000 Protestants were locked out of a Christmas celebration supposed to take place at the National Convention Centre in the Tu Liem district of Hanoi on Sunday Dec. 19. The organisers had rented the auditorium but at the last minutes the managers of the state-owned facility unitarily terminated the contract.

Deeply disappointed to see the door locked and hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes yelled at them, chasing them away, the Christians began singing and praying in the square in front of the building. Police called for reinforcements and started punching some Christians. Some were struck hard with night sticks. Late police reinforcements carrying electric cattle prods attacked more violently against the crowd which eventually left the site, but not before at least six people including Rev. Nguyen Huu Bao, the scheduled speaker at the event, had been arrested.

Protestants protest at the gate of the National Convention Centre
Excessive violence employs
Launch the campain "Each Catholic in Hanoi is a good citizen"
Similar stoppages took place simultaneously in Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, and Da Nang.

Earlier, on two consecutive days of Dec. 8 and 9, local officials interrupted scheduled liturgical celebrations and ongoing Christmas preparations at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Saigon, belonging to the Redemptorist order. Fr. Vincent Pham Trung Thanh, the provincial superior, was taken in for questioning where the Redemptorists were accused of preaching anti-government sentiment, instigating disorder, inciting riots and violating social media codes.

Two weeks later, Redemptorists in Vietnam faced another trouble. In an urgent protest letter published on Dec. 20, Father Joseph Dinh Huu Thoai, chief of the secretariat of the local Redemptorist province, cried out that the Redemptorist monastery in Dalat city had just been ruled by the local government of Lam Dong to be converted into a regional biological research institute.

In a similar incident, Sr. Philippe Dinh Thi Nhung, the provincial superior of the Sisters of Providence of Portieux, accused the local government of Soc Trang Province of bulldozing illegally the order’s monastery in Soc Trang City. “The government ‘borrowed’ in a coercive condition part of our monastery on June 25, 1976,” wrote the superior in her urgent protest letter dated Dec. 21.

“Recently, for the safety of our sisters, we need to renovate our house. We ask them to return the other part. But they refused and started bulldozing it,” lamented the nun who still kept all documents in which the government had stated that it would return to the order if requested.

Right on the Christmas Day, local officials at Son Lang village, K'Bang County, Kontum backed by police and militia banned Mgr. Michael Hoang Duc Oanh, Bishop of Kontum from celebrating the Mass. “If you want to celebrate your Mass you can do so, but not for everyone here. You have to go to each family and each Mass cannot last for more than one hour,” he was told. The prelate gave his blessings to the congregation and cancelled the Mass as a gesture of protest.

The escalation of violence crackdowns of the government, happening simultaneously on a large scale, sparks a growing concern among Catholics over a new policy of repression against Christians. The fear has been reinforced by bustling activities of ‘patriotic’ Catholics.

State-owned newspapers reported that in a conference of the “Hanoi’s Committee for Catholic Solidarity” on Dec. 21, Pham Huy Thong, vice-chairman of the committee had launched the campaign “Each Catholic in the capital is a good citizen” which would be carried out throughout the year 2011.

The phrase "a good Catholic is a good citizen" is taken from the June 27, 2009 speech of Benedict XVI to the bishops of Vietnam, on the occasion of their ad Limina visit. Removed from its context, it is understood and used by state media to demand complete and unconditional submission to civil authorities from Catholics.

In the light of what had happened in the Eighth Assembly of the representatives of Chinese Catholics, and recent events in Vietnam, in an article published on Dec. 27, Fr. Pascal Nguyen Ngoc Tinh, a biblical scholar in Saigon, warned that Vietnam government has been carrying out a strategy to transform Catholicism in Vietnam into a “religion of festivals and rituals”, “a decoration for the regime’s self-promotion” in order to hide its notorious human rights record.

“There’s no autonomous Church in Vietnam, literally,” he stated, adding that: “History proves that once recognising its failure to destroy a particular religion, Vietnam communist government accepts it as a reality, but at the same time employs all measures and strategies to corrupt the religious leaders so as they themself drive their religion into the direction of the Party.”

Catholic activists in Vietnam have questioned the bishops for their unwillingness to adopt a confrontational attitude toward the nation’s government, particularly on issues such as abortion and on the government’s seizure of property from the Church. Bishop Joseph Nguyen Chi Linh, the vice President of the episcopal conference, admitted that the public criticism is “an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of the Church in Vietnam.”

“The Jubilee Year in Vietnam is coming to the end with the great closing ceremony at La Vang in the presence of Cardinal Dias, the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and the Pope’s special envoy to the celebration. He will witness the grandeur of a great festival, the devotion of the faithful, their respect towards their shepherds, their loyalty to the Pope to whom he represents. Does he know that if the Catholic Church in Vietnam is still the Church of Jesus Christ when she cannot perform her prophetic mission, becomes indifferent and insensitive to the suffering of people and the future of the country, and turns her back against the poor, or she has already transformed herself to a Church of festivals and rituals?” asked the biblical scholar.