Read the Factual Background and discuss what human right has been violated by the Vietnamese Government and what kind of human rights mechanism you would use to protect the Con Dau parish. FACTUAL BACKGROUND Con Dau, a coterminous Catholic parish of Approximately 2,000 parishioners, was established in 1885 by French Missionaries. The early residents lived on the small fishing boats which they used for fishing and moved easily around the area to evade attacks and capture by government officials when Vietnamese kings were persecuting Christians. The first thing the early residents built on the dry area of the island was a small temple where they came to pray together and to attend Mass served by a French Priest commuting from a parish 30 miles away. The first church was built in 1895 at the very place where the current parish church is located. Renovated a number of times over the years to accommodate more parishioners, it has remained the center of every public activity in the parish. Surrounded by two rivers and built by many generations of residents, Con Dau became a typical Vietnamese farming village with a vast green rice field surrounding rural houses protected by rows of bamboo trees. Visible from any angle is the high tower of the church at the center of the village. The farming and church activities over the years have built a unique culture for the community that is difficult to find nowadays in Vietnam, a culture shaped by their history of survival, self-sufficiency, self-preservation, interdependence, and mutual support. Every year, on "All Souls Day" on November 2, everyone attends Mass at the chapel at the center of the parish's cemetery. This is a special time to pray for ancestors and relatives. During the month of November, every clan in the parish organizes a banquet for members of their extended family to stay in touch with one another. They also come together to the cemetery to visit their relatives' graves, light candles, bring flowers, and clean up the tombstones. They also take turns to come together in each family for evening prayers every night. The parish church is the place where everyone is baptized. It is the place where they are married and the last place where they are honored when they die. Most of the parishioners live in Con Dau, their birthplace, even though some work in Da Nang City. Over the years, a few hundred parishioners have moved to other towns in the south and overseas but always keep contact with their parish and come back to visit whenever they can. The parish's cemetery was built in the early days of the Con Dau Commune. It is the place where generations of parishioners were buried. Its chapel serves as the second place of worship for the parishioners, especially when there is a death in the parish. It has becomes a tradition that everyone in the parish comes to pay tribute to the deceased. All final rituals are performed at the cemetery and parishioners gather nightly to pray for the deceased. The life of everyone in the Con Dau Commune was completely disrupted when in May 2007 the government of Da Nang City announced a plan to expropriate 430 hectares of land in the Hoa Xuan Ward area, including the entire village of Con Dau (110 hectares) so as to lease them to developers to build an eco-resort. The project went to a private companythe Sun Group. The government offered pitifully low compensation for the land, at only $2.50/m2. However, monetary compensation was not what the parishioners sought. They wanted to preserve their parish which is inseparably tied to their Catholic faith and to their unique culture. The people of Con Dau proposed to move their homes closer to the church, offering the surrounding rice fields to the government to build the new eco-resort, but the government flatly rejected that option and repeatedly made it clear that staying was not an option. The government ordered the relocation of the cemetery to a mountainous area, far from any inhabitable place. In the new location they would have to live mingled with non-Catholics and therefore would lose their distinct communal characteristic and culture. All 1600 tombs in Con Dau's cemetery, which had been declared a cultural heritage by the Vietnamese government, would have to be moved. The local government resorted to many measures to achieve their goal, including threats and harassment. With few exceptions, Con Dau parishioners refused to move. The government placed a ban on further burials in the cemetery. On May 4, 2010, hundreds of anti-riot police officers assaulted parishioners who attended the funeral of a 93 year old parishioner. Police used tear gas, metal batons, electric rods, and rubber bullets to attack the funeral procession. They stole the casket and beat up the mourners. More than 100 mourners were injured, including children, pregnant women and the elderly. Sixty-two parishioners were arrested and brought to the police station, where they were all subjected to torture for days or weeks. Six were sentenced to prison terms. One parishioner who escaped arrest was later caught and tortured to death. Hundreds of parishioners had to relocated under pressure and threat or after their homes had been forcefully demolished. Over 100 parishioners had to flee Thailand to avoid arrest or soon after being released from detention or prison; most of them, including a number of torture victims, have been recognized as refugees and resettled to the United States. Still, many parishioners continue to dig in and are determined to save their parish despite the unrelenting pressure from the government. They have petitioned to the Prime Minister for intervention, staged months of protests in Ha Noi, and repeatedly spoke to representatives of the central government and to Da Nang City government officials, all to no avail so far. In at least 12 cases, real estates in Con Dau Parish targeted for expropriation by the Da Nang City actually belonged to U.S. citizensthey were former Con Dau parishioners who had resettled to the United States and had acquired U.S. citizenship before the expropriation order. Most of these properties of U.S. citizens have been forcibly expropriatedtheir houses have been demolished and their land delivered to the Sun Group, a private developer, which then sell land right use to private investors. In a number of instances, relatives of the U.S. citizen owners still occupy the house; however, the government has blocked these properties from being sold directly to. Buyers or gifted to relatives. This is in gross violation of Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recently, in the government crackdown on corruption, the police arrested many high ranking police officers and government officials in Danang, including Police Lieutenant Colonel Phan Van Anh Vu, former Chairman of Da Nang City People's Committee, Tran Van Minh, and six others for violating regulations on managing and using state property, causing losses and break state regulations on land management. Almost every one of these Danang officials accused of wrongdoing were involved or participated in the land grabbing case at Con Dau Parish. After 8 years since the 2010 crackdown, there are currently about 100 families still holing up in a small area of Con Dau. Thirty of them are homeless because their houses were demolished without any compensation. The new party chief of Danang city seems willing to find a final solution for the case in Con Dau, but how soon or how it can be done is yet to be seen. RIGHTS AND VIOLATIONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW Concerning specific violations, we want to note that this section is not entirely exhaustive. Principles of international law whereby we can draw violations from inevitably vary. Additionally, if a right under international law has already been exercised via contact through the United Nations, it will not be listed here. This memo concerns available avenues for the International Human Rights Clinic to pursue. The Right to Self-Determination