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On May 5, John Hanford, U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom, announced an agreement with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam regarding issues of religious liberty. The details of the agreement, outlined privately in an exchange of letters, have not yet been made public.

Hanford initiated negotiations with Vietnamese officials in early February during a lengthy visit to the communist country. On March 8, the Cong An newspaper quoted Deputy Minister of Public Security General Nguyen Van Huong giving the ambassador the standard government line that Vietnam holds no religious prisoners and no prisoner in Vietnam has ever been mistreated.

But negotiations in the following weeks produced some changes, as Hanford announced during a May 5 news conference that 12 religious prisoners were released as part of a special amnesty.

Compass has learned that six Hmong Christians were among those prisoners freed in connection with the April 30 amnesty. Mua A Chau had been sentenced to three years for "resisting an officer doing his duty." Ly Chin Seng, Ly Xin Quang, Vang Chin Sang and Vang My Ly, four men of the Hoang Su Phu District in Ha Giang province, were serving sentences from 26 to 36 months for "disturbing public order" by holding worship services in their homes.

The other Hmong Christian, Sung Seo Pao, regained his freedom just 17 days before completing an 11-year sentence on similar charges.

In September 2004, the U.S. named Vietnam a "country of particular concern" (CPC) because of its record of religious liberty offenses. The 1998 Law on International Religious Freedom allows for sanctions to be imposed on a CPC that does not improve its religious rights record.

Alternatively, a CPC may negotiate an agreement with the U.S. to avoid sanctions. The new agreement with Vietnam marks the first time the U.S. has achieved this type of accord. If Vietnam takes corrective actions and satisfies U.S. concerns for religious freedom, it could be removed from the CPC list later this year.

In announcing the agreement, Hanford stated that Vietnam has shown progress on the legislative front by promulgating the Ordinance on Religion in November 2004. (Implementation guidelines were not published, however, until March 2005.) In conjunction with Hanford's Vietnam visit last February, Prime Minster Phan Van Khai issued unprecedented "special instructions" for Protestant Christians.

The instructions explicitly prohibit the forced renunciation of Christian faith, a common government practice used against ethnic minority Christians. Despite the decree, however, Human Rights Watch reports that forced renunciations are still taking place.

The instructions also make provision for Christian congregations to obtain official permission from local authorities to carry on religious activities, even though the larger church organization to which they belong has not yet acquired legal recognition from the central government.

If this provision were implemented, it would mark a sea of change in the way Vietnam has treated Christian groups. Nevertheless, Compass sources are not aware of any congregation that has received official permission to operate in the two months since the prime minister's instructions were issued.

According to Hanford, another evidence of progress is the government's promise to reopen churches that have been forcibly closed. Many hundreds of Montagnard congregations affiliated with the Evangelical Church of Vietnam-South were disbanded by government officials, mostly in 2002 and 2003. So far, the government has granted legal recognition to fewer than 40 of these churches, though it published a promise in December 2003 to expedite registration.

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May (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49