January 31, 2025

The Honorable Marco Rubio
Secretary 
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520 

Dear Secretary Rubio:  

We, the undersigned U.S.-based organizations, call on your good office to designate the Socialist Republic of Vietnam a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for ongoing systematic and egregious persecution against independent churches and religious believers. 

In July 2020, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you and Senator John Cornyn wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging CPC designation for Vietnam. In 2022 and then again in 2023, the Department of State included Vietnam on its Special Watch List. Regrettably, the Vietnamese government has steadfastly escalated religious persecution, both directly and through the use of state-controlled religious and pseudo-religious organizations. Below is a sample of the systematic egregious violations that have occurred over the past 12 months.

1. In early 2024, the state-controlled Buddhist Church of Vietnam defrocked Khmer Krom Theravada Buddhist monks who declared independence from it, setting the stage for their arrest and criminal prosecution by the police. On November 26, six Khmer Krom Buddhist monks and three of their followers were sentenced to prison terms between two and six years.
2. Throughout the year, the Vietnamese police, with the support of the state-controlled Evangelical Church of Vietnam – South, coerced hundreds of ethnic minority Montagnard Christians to quit their house churches and join ECVN-South.  Montagnard Christians who resisted were publicly denounced, imprisoned, or extrajudicially killed. For instance, Mr. Nay Y Blang was sentenced to 4.5 years; Mr. Y Krec Bya was sentenced to 13 years; and Mr. Y Bum Bya was found dead after he complied with a demand from the local police that he meets with them; Mr. Y Thinh Nie taken into police custody on September 5 and has since been held incommunicado.
3. In early 2024 the police falsely accused Montagnards Stand for Justice, a peaceful human rights organization, of terrorism.  The Vietnamese authorities tried one of its co-founders in absentia and sentenced him to ten years of imprisonment.  The government has also threatened to prosecute for terrorism any Montagnards attending MSFJ’s training sessions on how to report human rights violations to UN Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies. 
4. In early November, members of the Cao Dai Sect — which was created by the government in 1997 as a replacement for the Cao Dai religion that had been outlawed by the Communist government shortly after it conquered South Vietnam in 1975 — violently attacked mourning relatives and guests at the funeral of a Cao Dai follower in Hoa Thanh District, Tay Ninh Province.  They were accompanied by thugs and government cadres wearing face masks. The police did not respond when called by the victims.
5. The government continues to force Hmong Christians to abandon their faith. The state-controlled Evangelical Church of Vietnam – North expelled its own members who defended their Christian faith in defiance of the local authorities’ orders. The wife and young children in Vietnam of an American citizen of Hmong ethnicity were among the targeted victims of forced renunciation of faith; they were blocked from joining their American husband and father in the United States. Thanks to the strong intervention of their Congressman, Rep. Glenn Grothman, the family members were finally reunited in May of this year. 
6. Last month, Vietnamese Attorney Trinh Vinh Phuc arrived in the United States to seek asylum.  He was preceded by three other human rights lawyers who fled to the United States in June after the police in Long An Province issued summonses and a search notice for criminal investigation against them. All four lawyers co-represented the Zen Hermitage at the Edge of the Universe, a small Buddhist group that was severely persecuted for not joining the state-created Buddhist Church of Vietnam. In July 2022 the Zen Hermitage group’s 92-year-old founder and five young monks were sentenced to a total of 23.5 years in prison. The Vietnamese police now go after the lawyers who represented them. 

After two years on the Special Watch List, Vietnam certainly deserves the CPC designation for its intensifying crackdown on independent Hoa Hao Buddhists, Cao Dai followers, Montagnard and Hmong Christians, Catholic parishioners, Khmer Krom Buddhists, members of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, and unaffiliated Buddhist groups. For unknown reasons, the Department of State under the previous Administration did not report to Congress its designations in 2024 as stipulated by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. We call on you to pick up where your predecessor left off, with a CPC designation for Vietnam. 

Your 2020 joint letter also called for imposing “Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against individuals for grave human rights abuses.” We support the application of targeted sanctions and would like to ask that, under your leadership, the Department of State also implements the visa restriction provision – which has been available under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) for the past 26 years – against Vietnamese officials who are complicit in serious violations of the right to religious freedom. 

We respectfully request your attention to this serious matter.

Sincerely,

Nguyen Dinh Thang, PhD
President & CEO, Boat People SOS

On behalf of: