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Vietnam Catholics Stage Rare Protest
November 18, 2011

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Hanoi. Up to 150 Vietnamese Catholics staged a rare public protest on Friday after communist authorities moved in to build a sewage reservoir that protesters say is on church land.

The protesters, some in clerical garb, marched peacefully around Hoan Kiem lake, a popular meeting spot in the city center, singing and waving signs that read: “give back the land to the church,” an AFP reporter saw.

They gathered outside the Hanoi cathedral — headquarters of the local Catholic community — where some 20 uniformed and plainclothes policemen converged on the group and convinced them to disperse, the reporter said.

Demonstrations are rare in authoritarian Vietnam but religious tensions have flared since the authorities began work on Wednesday on the sewage project which will service a public hospital in what, years ago, was a monastery.

Officials began seizing property from Vietnamese churches more than 50 years ago when the communists took power in what was then North Vietnam, after the defeat of French colonizers.

The church says the authorities took over the three-storey monastery building almost 40 years ago and the reservoir project is just the latest example of the state whittling away their property.

Up to 300 parishioners held a prayer vigil on Wednesday night inside the church.

One Catholic activist told AFP that the demonstrators had delivered a formal request to the Hanoi People’s Committee, the local government, asking that the land be returned to the church.

Vietnam has Southeast Asia’s second-largest Roman Catholic community after the Philippines, with at least six million followers.

The Vatican and Vietnam do not have diplomatic relations but in recent years have begun a reconciliation, although the land issue remains a point of contention.

Religious activity remains under state control in Vietnam but the government says it always respects the freedom of belief and religion.

Agence France-Presse