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Vietnamese Bishop says renewed persecution awaits if asylum claims rejected
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Bishop Paul Cao Dinh Thuyen, centre, the retired bishop of Vinh diocese in central Vietnam, says indefinite imprisonment awaits many Vietnamese asylum seekers whose claims are rejected. Bishop Paul, pictured with Vietnamese Catholic Community Chaplain, Fr Huynh Nguyen, left, and Fr Dinh Van Quynh, urged the immigration department to accept the claims of 26 detainees in Northam. PHOTO: ROBERT HIINI
By Robert Hiini VIETNAMESE asylum seekers detained in Northam will face immediate and indefinite imprisonment if the Australian Government rejects their claims for asylum, a visiting Vietnamese bishop said in Perth this week. On November 4, Bishop Paul Cao Dinh Thuyen, the retired prelate of Vinh, spoke to 14 of many more detainees hailing from his diocese being held at the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre, 5km out of Northam’s town centre. In an exclusive interview with The Record, Bishop Paul said the fallout from rejected applications would not be limited to detainees. The families of detainees whose claims were rejected, Bishop Paul said, would also face police harassment and persecution from government officials. The government regularly threatened and imprisoned Catholics railing against suppression of
conscience; compulsory and inadequately remunerated land acquisitions; and advocacy for fisherman beaten for fishing in the eastern Vietnam sea, among other causes. The bishop said the detainees told him their greatest worry was “that they don’t know their fate”, particularly after 28 Vietnamese
go to interview”... and they lock the door and they have the official come to their place and get all their belongings and they send them back quietly,” Bishop Paul recounted the detainees’ having told him. In a letter addressed to the immigration department and handed to officials during the visit, the bishop
Our parishes have faced a brutal crackdown by Vietnamese police. Parishioners have been threatened and arrested, and have fled. who arrived in Australia by boat were sent back to Vietnam, midOctober. Ten of that number were returned forcibly for not having had a valid claim to asylum - information attributed to the defence department in an ABC report on October 26. “They have another tactic. They call people out and they said, “you
wrote that Vietnamese Catholics’ claims of persecution were real and substantive. “Our parishes of diocese of Vinh have been cracked down bloodily and brutally by Vietnamese police in Vietnam [sic],” the bishop wrote in the letter, co-signed by two other priests from the region. “The parishioners have been threatened to be arrested and
imprisoned. A few among them were so frightened that they fled to many places in the world, especially to Australia and now they are more frightened to go back to Vietnam, especially those who criticised the unfair and lawless acts of communist police and officials [sic],” the bishop wrote. His message to the detainees during his visit was principally pastoral, telling them they should pray to God and Our Lady for strength to face “the challenging time in the detention centre”. “You are assured of the support of our people in Vietnam and the people here too - the Catholic community here - to support you, but you should pray and thank God for everything that has happened,” the bishop recounted through a translator. “If you get refugee status and you are released into the community you should respect the law of the country where they support Continued page 6