Vietnam demands US remove it from religious rights blacklist

[Why Syzygy]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051029/wl_asia_afp/vietnamusreligionrights&printer=1

Sat Oct 29,12:14 AM ET

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.

***

also see *
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/

[Debau2005]

1. Excuse me?

The US is currently siting another country for religious rights violations? Is this not the pot calling the kettle black?

[Benhurst]

2. The amazing thing is that anyone, to say nothing of a government,

would take anything produced by the BushAmerican State Department seriously.

[Why Syzygy]

3. This from an email * no copyright

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 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.


**** It's about drugs evidently. The ones the pharmcos can't control. We need reasonable decriminalization. And stop haunting the planet with narrow minded, robber barron mentality.
Stop the Madness. Just say "nope".

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/