State President Vo Van Thuong offered greetings to Buddhist dignitaries and followers on the birth anniversary of Lord Buddha, while visiting Hue Nghiem and Minh Dao pagodas in Ho Chi Minh City on May 26.
In their recently released international religious freedom reports, the US Department of State and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on one hand recognised Vietnam’s certain progress in promoting religious freedom and citing some official information from Government agencies of Vietnam but on the other still includes inobjective assessments based on unverified and inaccurate information about the reality in Vietnam.
As a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country with diverse religious and belief life, the Vietnamese State consistently implements a policy of respecting and guaranteeing a citizen's right to freedom of religion and belief, and the right to follow or not follow any religion; ensuring equality and non-discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief; and protecting activities of religious organisations by law, stated the Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Spokesperson Pham Thu Hang on May 18.
Leaders of member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety, and freedom of navigation in and overflight above the East Sea.
Secretary of Hai Phong city’s Party Committee Le Tien Chau, who is former Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee, on April 27 was awarded a second-class Freedom Order (Issara) of Laos for his contributions to cooperation in front work between the two countries.
The US Embassy wishes to cooperate with Vietnam to remove the Southeast Asian nation from the US’s special watch list on religious freedom, Ambassador Marc E. Knapper told Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Vu Chien Thang during their meeting in Hanoi on April 14.
The Vietnam - Holy See Joint Working Group held the 10th-round meeting in the Vatican on March 31 under the co-chair of Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Thi Thu Hang and Monsignor Miroslaw Wachowski, Under-Secretary for the Holy See's Relations with States.
The consistent policy of the Vietnamese Party and State in ensuring people's right to freedom of belief has been enshrined in the country's Constitutions issued in 1946, 1959, 1980, 1992 and 2013, creating favourable conditions for all religions in the country.
No other country of the same size in the world has achieved such great achievements on the Index of Economic Freedom as Vietnam since 1995, highlighted German economic and financial news website wallstreet-online.de in a recent article.
The Government Committee for Religious Affairs released the white book on religions and religious policies in Vietnam at a conference held by the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications in Hanoi on March 9.
Vietnam pursues a consistent policy of respecting and ensuring people's freedom to belief and religion as well as the equality among religions, while promoting cultural and moral values and resources of religions for the country’s development, stated Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai.
Police in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho on February 22 decided to arrest and launch criminal proceedings against Le Minh The for “abusing the rights of freedom and democracy to violate the State’s interests, legitimate rights and interests of organisations and individuals" in accordance with Article 331 of the 2015 Criminal Code which was revised and supplemented in 2017.
Police of Ho Chi Minh City have finished an investigation into Nguyen Phuong Hang, General Director of the Dai Nam JSC, and three accomplices for the charge of “abusing rights of freedom and democracy to infringe upon interests of the State, rights and legitimate interests of organisations and individuals”.
The signing of the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam on January 27, 1973, had brought a special spring to the northern region, when for the first time in the resistance war there was no air-raid siren and no evacuation, former Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan told Vietnam News Agency during a recent interview on the occasion of the agreement's 50th signing anniversary.
The signing of the Paris Agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam on January 27, 1973, created a new turning point in the Vietnamese nation’s resistance war against the US imperialists to liberate the south and unify the country.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also known as the Montego Bay Convention that made its way in the world on December 10, 1982, was a great step towards maintaining the freedom of navigation and has served as a basis for the development of marine activities and ocean conservation, said former Vice Admiral of the French Navy Patrick Hebrard.
Vietnam is a country with religious and belief diversity. The Vietnamese Party and State have always pursued a consistent policy of respecting and ensuring the right to freedom of belief and religion, and promoting good cultural and moral values and resources of religions in service of national development.
The US’s decision to put Vietnam in the special watch list on religious freedom is based on unobjective assessment and inaccurate information regarding the situation of freedom of religion and belief in Vietnam, Foreign Ministry deputy spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang said at the ministry’s regular press briefing on December 15.
A Facebook account owner in Hanoi was sentenced on October 27 to two years in prison for posting false information that affected businesses and harmed the stock market.
Vietnam is home to different forms of religions and beliefs that are co-existing, and this serves the need for religious and spiritual life of a large number of people.
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