The Vietnam Conflict
The modern conflicts within Vietnam are part of the ongoing terrifying history of war that still exists to this today. Each dynasty of the region has produced issues of its own. The people under the leadership have rarely seen a time that was not shrouded in conflict.
When the American troops were recalled at the end of the Vietnam War, a conflict manifested in Vietnam that most Americans do not understand. The Vietnamese government morphed into a socialist party as a product of the divided capitalists and communist halves. The solution to differing opinions of the common people was reeducation camps. These camps were horrifying places that had the sole purpose of reeducating the population to think like their new government by any means necessary. The specifics of these camps do not exist in written history. The government has kept no record of the number of people that went through them, nor the type of treatment they received. According to Dartcenter, anywhere between 1 million to 2.5 million Vietnamese people were processed through this camp system.
The government was trying to create a unified, submissive population in the post-war wake that formed the unified political leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) in 1975. This time period has been marked in the form of legislation and prohibition towards the people.
The largest group targeted by the legislation is religious groups. The government sensed the threat of groups that had their own belief systems and who gathered together consistently. "Followers of religions not officially recognized by the government continue to be routinely persecuted. Security officials disperse their religious gatherings, confiscate religious literature, and summon religious leaders to police stations for interrogation" (HRW).
Since the inception of the VCP in the 70s, the country of Vietnam has become more homogeneous in leadership. The government has given allowance for more freedom for religious groups and minorities, "however, the government continues to require religious organizations to register with the government in order to be legal, and prohibits religious activities determined to cause public disorder, harm national security, or sow divisions" (HRW). This has produced freedom to an extent in the country as a whole, but some in certain areas, local authorities have taken the regulations into their own hands and used the new regulations as evidence to arrest minority Christians that they suspect of belonging to churches that operate independently (HRW).
A minority group that has specifically been a target by the government are the Montagnard Christians. Montagnard means "mountain people" in reference to the minority groups that reside in the mountain regions of Vietnam. Just between 2001-2004, nearly 300 Montagnard Christians were imprisoned as religious separatists that "undermine national unity" (HRW).
The acts of targeting groups sadly is not just a thing of the past for the Country of Vietnam. The harassment of religious and racial minorities is an ongoing part of life for many of Vietnam's residents. "Followers of religions not officially recognized by the government continue to be routinely persecuted. Security officials disperse their religious gatherings, confiscate religious literature, and summon religious leaders to police stations for interrogation" (HRW).
When the American troops were recalled at the end of the Vietnam War, a conflict manifested in Vietnam that most Americans do not understand. The Vietnamese government morphed into a socialist party as a product of the divided capitalists and communist halves. The solution to differing opinions of the common people was reeducation camps. These camps were horrifying places that had the sole purpose of reeducating the population to think like their new government by any means necessary. The specifics of these camps do not exist in written history. The government has kept no record of the number of people that went through them, nor the type of treatment they received. According to Dartcenter, anywhere between 1 million to 2.5 million Vietnamese people were processed through this camp system.
The government was trying to create a unified, submissive population in the post-war wake that formed the unified political leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) in 1975. This time period has been marked in the form of legislation and prohibition towards the people.
The largest group targeted by the legislation is religious groups. The government sensed the threat of groups that had their own belief systems and who gathered together consistently. "Followers of religions not officially recognized by the government continue to be routinely persecuted. Security officials disperse their religious gatherings, confiscate religious literature, and summon religious leaders to police stations for interrogation" (HRW).
Since the inception of the VCP in the 70s, the country of Vietnam has become more homogeneous in leadership. The government has given allowance for more freedom for religious groups and minorities, "however, the government continues to require religious organizations to register with the government in order to be legal, and prohibits religious activities determined to cause public disorder, harm national security, or sow divisions" (HRW). This has produced freedom to an extent in the country as a whole, but some in certain areas, local authorities have taken the regulations into their own hands and used the new regulations as evidence to arrest minority Christians that they suspect of belonging to churches that operate independently (HRW).
A minority group that has specifically been a target by the government are the Montagnard Christians. Montagnard means "mountain people" in reference to the minority groups that reside in the mountain regions of Vietnam. Just between 2001-2004, nearly 300 Montagnard Christians were imprisoned as religious separatists that "undermine national unity" (HRW).
The acts of targeting groups sadly is not just a thing of the past for the Country of Vietnam. The harassment of religious and racial minorities is an ongoing part of life for many of Vietnam's residents. "Followers of religions not officially recognized by the government continue to be routinely persecuted. Security officials disperse their religious gatherings, confiscate religious literature, and summon religious leaders to police stations for interrogation" (HRW).
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