Freedom of Religion in Vietnam - History of Antireligious Campaign

History of Antireligious Campaign

Like other states based upon Marxist-Leninist ideology, Vietnam's communists embraced a militantly atheistic stance against religion. At the same time, they were also influenced by anti-colonial and nationalist traditions in Vietnam, including the writings of Phan Boi Chau. During the First Indochina War (1946–1954), despite its doctrinal atheism, the Indochinese Communist Party made efforts at recruiting religious believers to its side. The Catholic minority, while being obviously linked to the French presence, were seen as potential allies rather than ipso facto opponents, provided they could be recruited to the anti-colonial side. Catholic missionaries were condemned in party propaganda, but Vietnamese Catholics were called upon as compatriots to embrace nationalism. Anti-Catholic criticism was thereby focused on French Catholic clerics as a foreign element and avoided doctrinal criticism of the beliefs of the church. In an effort to reach out to Vietnamese Catholics, Ho Chi Minh attended Christmas Mass in 1945 and included Catholics in his cabinet.

In 1954, it was because of the communists' anti-religious stance that Eisenhower's government decided to promote the leadership of a devout Catholic named Ngo Dinh Diem for South Vietnam. It was assumed that he would protect the rights of freedom of religion in South Vietnam, due to his deep faith, but instead he used his power to suppress Buddhism (which was the majority religion of South Vietnam) and promote Catholicism.

The Communist party in the North from 1954 and from the South from 1975, attacked many traditional religious practices and folk beliefs. The spirit worship of common people was interpreted from the marxist perspective as being a survival from an earlier stage of social evolution when people deified nature in their inability to overcome or control it. These beliefs were considered illusory and that they made people 'impotent' (bat luc) and fatalistic. These beliefs were considered to undermine people's confidence and did not encourage them to believe people could solve their own problems. The spirit worship was considered by the communists as a tool of 'feudal' elites to maintain their oppressive rule. Lady Lieu Hanh, a goddess worshipped in Vietnamese folk religion was also considered an importation from Chinese taoism and therefore a legacy of Chinese colonialism.

After the Communists won the war and reunified Vietnam, the government in Hanoi turned to suppress religion with great force. Many Buddhists had been opposed to the war and when the Communists achieved victory, the anti-war efforts by Vietnamese Buddhists were marginalized by the government. The Buddhist peace activist Cao Ngoc Phuong (who had been previously jailed by the Saigon government) was branded a ‘war criminal’ by the Hanoi regime.

Buddhist self-immolations, like the kind that had occurred in South Vietnam against the government in Saigon, soon occurred in the unified Vietnam in protest of the government's treatment of Buddhism. In November 1975, 12 Buddhist monks and nuns immolated themselves in Can Tho. In 1977, Thich Nu Nhu Hien burned herself in Hanoi in order to be a ‘torch of wisdom’ that would bring the government to embrace religious tolerance. Many of the Buddhists who burned themselves in protest of the Communist government belonged to the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which was banned by Hanoi afterwards.

Many Vietnamese held greater respect for the Buddhist hierarchy than for the communist government, and many people in opposition to the government saw Buddhism as an alternative to Marxism. Government opposition has portrayed Marxism as being a foreign western ideology, while Buddhism was linked to the indigenous heritage of Vietnam.