A Closed Tribunal Will Pretend to Decide the Fates of Eight Vietnamese Catholics
Contrary to Vietnamese law, the upcoming trial of eight Vietnamese Catholics are closed to the public. According to Vietnamese law, trials are open to all those who are over the age of sixteen except in cases, such as rape, where an open trial would harm the reputation of the victim.1 The trial in this case stems from the dispute between Thai Ha parish in Ha Noi, Viet Nam and the communist government over the taking of the parish’s land. Thus, the victim whose reputation would be harm in this case is the government itself.
The Thai Ha parish is operated by the Redemptorists, who arrived in Vietnam in 1925.2 In 1928, they bought 60,000 square meters (approximately 14.826 acres), where they built a church, a convent, and a seminary. When the atheist Communist party came in power in the 1940s and 1950s, most parishioners and religious were prosecuted, imprisoned, or fled to South Vietnam. The parish was left vulnerable to the control of the Communist party, who converted the convent into a hospital and gave of the land to state companies and members of the party.3
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