Washington D.C., Sep 15, 2016 / 05:04 am
If the U.S. uses its moral authority' to pressure Vietnam on human rights issues, the southeast Asian country will change for the better, religious freedom advocates maintained at a conference on Monday.
"Vietnam wants to be part of the world, and I'm sure it does. It needs to not treat religious liberty as the poor sister of the human rights family, or worse, as the eccentric uncle of the human rights family," Kristina Arriaga, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated at a Sept. 12 event hosted by the Hudson Institute on religious freedom in Vietnam.
"Without religious freedom, no other right exists," she added.
The freedom of citizens to practice their religion in Vietnam "varies," the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted in its 2016 annual report, because while "the government has made dramatic openings with respect to religious freedom," officials – at both the national and local levels – can also treat certain religious leaders and communities with hostility, as supposedly "threatening to the state."