9/7/11 USA (NY Times) – “Vietnam Embraces an Old Enemy” (news article, Aug. 29) reports that the relationship between the United States and Vietnam has evolved positively and will likely continue to do so as economic and military ties deepen.

But the article glosses over significant human rights concerns, specifically in the area of religious freedom. As the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reports, the Vietnamese government “continues to sanction violence against religious communities.”

This state-sanctioned violence has included beatings with batons, forcible detentions and the sexual assault of priests.

Nonapproved religious groups like the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, the Hoa Hao Buddhists and Montagnard Christians are monitored by a special “religious police” unit and are considered “extremists.” Supreme Patriarch Thich Quang Do and Friar Phan Van Loi of the Unified Buddhists have been held under house arrest. I don’t see the “progress” reported.

The United States should be committed to Southeast Asia, but we do the Vietnamese people a disservice by ignoring human rights.

By Representative Ed Royce, R-CA.