Hanoi - A government-imposed deadline to end a vigil lasting several weeks by Catholic demonstrators demanding the return of church land in downtown Hanoi passed Sunday with no immediate effort by police to disperse the demonstrators. Hundreds of protestors gathered on the lawn of the former Vatican embassy, in the heart of Hanoi's old quarter, while a group of nuns sat around a five-metre high crucifix on the steps of the colonial- era building, leading the crowd in Vietnamese-language Catholic hymns.
"Even if the police come, the people won't leave," said Dao Van Chinh, a deacon at St Joseph's Cathedral, which stands next to the disputed property. "This land is the church's land, not the government's."
Priests and Catholic lay people began staging vigils at the former Vatican embassy in mid December, after the government failed for three years to respond to requests for the land to be returned, said Father Peter Thanh, a priest from Ho Chi Minh City who has been involved in the conflict.
The Hanoi People's Committee, the city's governing body, issued an order on January 26 giving the protestors until 5 p.m. Sunday to leave the premises, and to remove the crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary they had erected, but none did.
The order states that a parish priest turned the land over to the government in 1961, and that it therefore falls under the management of the local People's Committee.
Father Thanh disputed that claim saying the government had confiscated the land on the pretext that it had belonged to the Vatican, but that in fact it had belonged to the Vietnamese church.
Responding to reporters' queries about the dispute Thursday, government spokesman Le Dung said that under Vietnamese law, the state owns all land, and citizens and organizations can only purchase land usage rights.
In late December, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid an unofficial visit to Hanoi's Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet, raising hopes for a settlement, but none has yet materialized.
"We are more and more disappointed," said Thanh. "The prime minister came to see us, and he promised to do this and that. But after that we haven't seen any action from him."
Vietnam's Communist government has become increasingly tolerant of religious diversity in recent years, easing the conflicts between church and state which characterized the 1950s through 1970s.
Prime Minister Dung last year became the first Vietnamese leader to visit the Vatican, and the government has officially recognized several new evangelical churches.
But the Communists confiscated large amounts of Catholic Church property in northern Vietnam after they came to power in 1954, and in southern Vietnam after taking control there in 1975.
As property rights have become institutionalized in Vietnam's increasingly privatized economy in recent years, disputes have arisen over several of these properties.
"The state won't give the land back because of corruption, because the land is worth so much money," said one of the protestors, 65- year-old Doan Thi Tuyet.
Land prices in downtown Hanoi run well over a thousand dollars per square metre.
Tuyet, too, said police would not drive the protestors away.
"We are not afraid of death," she said.
