Vietnam demands US remove it from religious rights blacklist 
 

The US Government, "Mother of all Religious Prohibition" where it concerns the worship rights of people whose spiritual life includes the sacramental use of Cannabis, Peyote, Ayahuasca, Psilocybe and other Mushrooms, the Lysergics, and all other Entheogen plants and chemicals, has had the audacity to include the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on a blacklist of countries which supposedly do not allow enough spiritual freedom.

Within the US there are more than two million people in prison, and altogether, around seven million people held within the combined "correctional" institutions and bureaucracies under custody, supervision, home arrest, parole, etc. The largest percentage of these people are targeted for illegal substance- related cases, and the vast majority of them are caught in the system for marijuana- related "crimes".

The entire network of friends of Cannabis within the US is forced underground. According to the US Government itself, the National Institute of Health, there are about 100 million users within the US - all underground, hounded, hidden.  One hundred million.

The same policy - systematic Religious Prohibition - is extended by the US abroad, exported to the whole planet.

The US Government has instituted regimes of religious intolerance all over the world, which it maintains in power with a mixture of lies, lethal force, interventions in electoral occasions and by other political machinations, in order to serve as extensions of itself, as local variants of the global US Imperial command structure.

You can study the annual International Religious Freedom Report right here, if you like, and see the lies for yourself:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/

In it, the US lists Israel as a country where "the law provides for freedom of worship, and the Government generally respects this right in practice." This is an insult that flies in face of reality: Israel is a country of religious Apartheid, founded on the Zionist ideology which has placed the Hebrew religion in a position of supremacy over all others. And "all others" simply face the business- end of a rifle or an air-borne missile. Supplied by the US.

The US Report listing for Cyprus introduces it in the following way:
"The Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus provides for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in practice. The basic law governing the Turkish Cypriot community refers specifically to a "secular republic" and provides for freedom of religion, and the Turkish Cypriot authorities generally respect this right in practice." 

The reality is that both regimes in the north and the south of the tiny island, are extensions of the US Empire. It serves its interests to present them through lies.

The regime in the Cypriot north was founded by a murderous military invasion carried out with US weapons; the military occupation regime which is still in place by force of US weaponry for more than thirty years has ruled on the basis of a policy of religious and ethnic genocide, of forced demographic changes by importation of settlers and by many other violations of the Geneva Convention. 

The regime in the Cypriot south is kept in power by its alliance with the financial and business branches of the global Empire, and by allowing military operations of the Empire against the neighbours of Cyprus (such as Iraq and Afghanistan) to be carried out from the areas it controls - its policy of internal administration of the country is founded primarily and exclusively on religious intolerance, prejudice, and prohibition, which are written into its (illegitimate) Constitution, and its laws. 

For example, for fifteen years or more, proposed legislation for issuing operation permits to cremation facilities for the needs of people who, for  religious reasons, choose to avoid burial and who prefer to have their bodies released back to the elements through fire, is blocked by the pseudo- christian church which owns and controls most of the south. To this day, a cremation funeral is illegal. This religious prohibition is justified by the claim that legalizing cremation will open the doors to Satan, atheism, and pagans.

These are a few instances of the "fair" presentations by the US Government of the conditions of Religious Freedom around the world in its annual Report.

In the past, reports of this type that were full of carefully constructed lies, were heavily used against socialist and communist countries in order to "combat godless communism". The practice is still continued against China and a few other countries targeted by owners of Big Capital who mobilize the US Government to use its "discrete" influence to bear on them in order to seize their markets, productive facilities and resources. 

All in the name of god. 

Petros Evdokas,
Cyprus IndyMedia volunteer
petros (at) cyprus-org.net
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Following is a current article on the issue from the French Press Agency.
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Vietnam has demanded the United States remove it from a State Department blacklist of religious rights violators.

It was responding after a US Congress-mandated commission asked that Vietnam be maintained as a "country of particular concern" in the State Department's annual religious freedom report, which is due to be released soon.

Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesman Le Dung said the commission's accusations of a lack of religious freedom were groundless and asked Washington to remove Hanoi from the blacklist.

"Vietnam demands the US to take a right decision in accordance with the principles in bilateral relationship as well as not to affect to the recent positive progress in the Vietnam-US relations," Dung said in a statement received Saturday.

"The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has made a totally wrongful recommendation based on fabricated information about Vietnam," he said.

"All religions in Vietnam are granted favorable condition to develop by the State. There is not a so-called 'religious repression' to any religion in Vietnam," Dung said.

At a Congressional hearing Wednesday, the commission said it had been "encouraged by the Vietnam government's promises over the past year to improve conditions for its ethnic and religious minorities.

"But we remain disappointed that promises have not yet been translated into positive change," said Michael Cromartie, the commission's chairman.

From the Agence France Presse, at Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051029/wl_asia_afp/vietnamusreligionrights&printer=1
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