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Emblem of Hòa Hảo

Phat Giao Hoa Hao is a quasi-Buddhist religion or sect, founded by Huỳnh Phú Sổ in 1939. It is one of the major religious of Vietnam with at least over a million and as high as eight million adherents, mostly concentrated in the Mekong Delta.

Hòa Hảo was, along with another religious movement known as Cao Đài, one of the first to engage in military conflict with colonial powers, first the French and then the Japanese. The sect flourished significantly under the Japanese occupation of World War II, with its adherents largely being peasants, tenants, and agricultural workers. It also transformed into a militant and nationalist religion, setting up its own virtually autonomous government in the region. The Hòa Hảo remained an autonomous force in Vietnamese politics after the war, opposing both French colonialists and Ho Chi Minh's Việt Minh movement.

Following the war, disagreements with other major factions made the Hòa Hảo an aggressive religio-political-military cult. Sổ was kidnapped and executed by the Việt Minh while on his way to a conference to resolve issues with the Communists. Many Hòa Hảo devotees hailed him as a Messianic figure who would arrive in a time of crisis. After 1954, the Hòa Hảo initiated armed opposition to President Ngô Đình Diệm's American-backed government. They controlled various southern and western regions of South Vietnam at the time of Diệm's death in 1963. They then led a campaign against Việt Cộng for the defence of their home provinces during the Vietnam War, becoming a major autonomous political force in South Vietnam until the Fall of Saigon in 1975. The Hòa Hảo struggled for rights following the war and in 1999 were officially recognized by the state, but the government imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hòa Hảo groups that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.

The Hòa Hảo sought a significant underlying aim of the preserving their religious identity and independence. They made temporary alliances with past enemies. Originally concerned only with religious autonomy, the Hòa Hảo struggle against the French, the Japanese, the Việt Minh, again the French, the newly independent South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and latterly the North Vietnamese Army. They enjoyed political influence during post-Diệm regimes of Saigon.

History

Origins

A photo of Huỳnh Phú Sổ who founded the religion.

The Hòa Hảo religion was founded by Huỳnh Phú Sổ, also known as the Grand Master or Virtuous Master, who was a Vietnamese philosopher born in 1919, in Mekong Delta to a Roman Catholic peasant family. Buddhist protestantism is exemplified by the Hoa Hao. The religion was named after Sổ's native Hòa Hảo, in what is now An Giang Province's Thốt Nốt District. It is located in the remote Miền Tây region of the Mekong Delta, which was formerly known as Transbassac under French colonial rule. The religion arose from a tangle of mysticism, magic, and witchcraft, which could be found in most of the region's local beliefs. Sổ founded the religion in 1939, declared himself a prophet, and began preaching a doctrine based on faith and simplicity; he traveled throughout Vietnam practicing herbal healing and acupuncture. Rooted in earlier Vietnamese anticolonial religious traditions, the Hoa Hao philosophy claims to be based on the thoughts of Phật Thầy Tây An (1807–1856), known as Đạo Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương. Tây An, in the 1830s, prophesied the collapse of the Vietnamese Empire at the hands of Western powers; the prophecies survived his death and spread throughout the Miền Tây, resulting in two major rebellions in 1875 and 1913 in which the French administration in the Miền Tây was nearly deposed. Within a year, he had amassed a following of over 100,000 converts and had made contact with another two million people in Mien Tay through his preaching. There were two major reasons in Sổ's success: the prophecies he made about the outbreak of World War II and the conquest of South-East Asia by Japan, and his work as a mystical healer—his patients claimed to have been miraculously cured from all manner of serious illnesses after seeing him, when Western medicine had failed. The masses, according to the Austrian politician Joseph Buttinger, held the religion's native origins in high regard. Sổ believed in the necessity for ordinary peasants to believe in the movement, and their pleas for allegiance from ordinary peasants were successful.

Sổ became a wildly popular leader as the religion grew in popularity. His influence quickly expanded beyond religious matters, and he became a powerful figure in lay affairs as well. The Hòa Hảo sect grew from a purely religious movement to encompass an impressive lay power structure centered on the Cần Tho Province. Sổ's religious prescriptions quickly merged with nationalist, anti-colonial sentiment, and he quickly rose to prominence as a key nationalist figure. The religion grew into the Mekong Delta's most powerful nationalist force, with strong sentiment against the colonial French rulers and the landlords who dominated the agriculture of Cochinchina. The Hòa Hảo played a crucial role in the anti-colonial, nationalist fervor that grew in the years leading up to World War II. The religion ultimately became a homegrown political movement in the region. Despite this, the Hòa Hảo, according to Edwin E. Moise, were patriotic and anti-nationalist in nature. He argued that they were too small to have a realistic possibility of governing a national government, thus a powerful central government had to imply control of their districts by a government ruled by people, not beliefs. They preferred a weaker government in order to gain a de facto autonomy. In the meanwhile, other anti-French organizations arose, the most notable of which was the Việt Minh, which became the sole anti-colonial organization to establish a grass-roots structure. The religious leadership competed with the Communist movement over the peasants' support, though initial conflict was not about the Việt Minh's then-hidden Communist ideas, but rather about the fact that they were not native to the region.

World War II

Imperial Japanese forces entering Saigon, 1940.

Early prophecies of Sổ began to come true. He anticipated the eruption of a major war in the Far East and the expulsion of the French by Asians. World War II and the Japanese occupation of Vietnam seemed to confirm his predictions. By 1940, he had gained such influence that the Vichy French governor Jean Decoux, fearing anti-French revolts, had Sổ imprisoned in Bạc Liêu under the reasoning that he was a lunatic. The imprisonment of Sổ was seen by his followers as an unforgivable act of war against the faith itself. Here, Sổ succeeded in converting his psychiatrist, Dr. Tam, who became an ardent supporter. A board of French psychiatrists declared him sane in May 1941, htough he was exiled upon his release. His key supporters were sent to a concentration camp in Nui Bara. The French restrictions strengthened his nationalist appeal, and Bạc Liêu soon became a place of Hòa Hảo pilgrimage, although it was far from the movement's strongholds. In 1942, the French could no longer withstand the growing popular reactions generated by Sổ's oracular pronouncements and political instructions. They exiled him to Laos.

The Japanese were quick to recognize the Hòa Hảo movement as a powerful anti-colonialist force. As the French Indochina was taken over by them, they intercepted and relocated Sổ to Saigon, placing him under protection. The Kenpeitai kept him under protection and the Japanese authorities rebuffed French demands for extradition by saying that he was held as a "Chinese spy". With Japanese military assistance, the Hòa Hảo were able to arm themselves and create battle formations to fight landlords, administrators, and French forces across the Mekong Delta. This led to the Hòa Hảo becoming less of a religious and more of a military-political movement, as people such as landowners converted in the hope that they could buy protection.

The Hòa Hảo had accepted Japanese assistance as a means of bolstering themselves against future threats, having been in conflicts with both the French and the Communist Việt Minh. The Hòa Hảo had a capable military force in place by the end of World War II, thanks to Japanese patronage, and had taken the offensive throughout the western Mekong Delta. Sổ and the Hòa Hảo began to mobilize against Japanese military troops in order to demonstrate their credentials as a resolute nationalist organization hostile to all foreign powers, having obtained the military strength required to ensure the sect's survival. Sổ avoided the stigma of being labeled a Japanese puppet by forecasting the empire's defeat months in advance. The sect joined the nationalist front that took power in the interregnum following Japan's surrender in order to establish a united resistance to both the Japanese and the French. As the Hòa Hảo began fighting the French, they clashed with other military groups such as the Việt Minh and the Cao Đài, who were also fighting the colonial force. Militarily superior than the Việt Minh, the Hòa Hảo became the main political power in the Mekong Delta region, constituting a huge threat to the Communists. The religious leadership was unwilling to toe the Việt Minh line from Hanoi. On 9 September 1945, a band of 15,000 Hoahaoists armed with hand-to-hand weapons attacked the Việt Minh garrison at Cần Thơ. With their antiquated weapons, the Hòa Hảo were defeated and Sổ's men were slaughtered.

Return of French rule

French marines landing in Annam, July 1950.

French M24 Chaffee in Vietnam.

The French colonial rule apparatus in Vietnam was disrupted during World War II. The German occupation of France and the subsequent collaboration of Vichy France with the Axis powers served to delegitimize French claims of sovereignty. Japan's defeat and withdrawal at the end of the war in 1945 left a power vacuum in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the return of French colonial regime helped to keep the Hòa Hảo and the Việt Minh apart, but it was also a major disappointment to the Hòa Hảo. Sổ had hoped that his sect would become the de facto ruling power throughout most of Cochinchina, but the arrival of a larger French force essentially put an end to such ambitions. The Hòa Hảo turned inward in order to strengthen their sectarian power and expand their political influence in the Mekong Delta. As the French got increasingly skeptical of the Việt Minh, the French signed a military treaty with the Hoa Hao on the 8 May 1947, less than a month after Sổ's assassination. In fact, throughout the First Indochina War (1946–1954), the French government had issued support payments for Cao Đài, Hòa Hao, and Bình Xuyên armed forces in exchange for their defense of sect territories against the Viet Minh. They granted the Hòa Hảo hegemony over the southwestern Mekong Delta and eventually provided arms for some 20,000 Hoahaoists. In return for aid against the Việt Minh, the new Hòa Hảo leadership was willing to form alliances with the colonialists; the sect did not see such an agreement as a betrayal of their nationalist ideals because the ultimate goal of sectarian independence was not jeopardized. The Hòa Hảo periodically harassed Việt Minh by tying its sympathizers together and throwing them into the river to drown. The Việt Minh were worried by Sổ's nationalist credentials and social structure, and attempted to co-opt him into a National Unified Front (NUF).

The Hòa Hảo perceived that religious supremacy could not be maintained without territorial hegemony as well. The sect demanded virtually autonomous control of affairs within its sphere of influence. This included participation in local government in places where it exercised coherent religious control. John B. Haseman suggests that one of the key reasons for the emergence of a Hòa Hảo–Việt Minh conflict Sổ early in the anti-colonialist struggle was the latter's refusal to accept the Hòa Hảo demand for political predominance inside its sphere. Although the Hòa Hảo appeared to be politically unstable on the surface as they swinged in ideological affiliation, its actions had a core constancy of purpose. As the French discovered, the sect's main goal was territorial political hegemony. The Hòa Hảo's alliance with the French lasted only as long as was necessary to obtain French arms. The Hòa Hảo, having the patronage of the colonial power, were able to hold off the Việt Minh during the latter's rise to dominance in the NUF. The Hòa Hảo repudiated the colonialists in 1947 and cautiously approached the NUF. The Hòa Hảo had suspicions for NUF for a long time; the sect's transition in allegiance from the colonialists to the NUF was not a huge break. Their effort was primarily aimed at securing control of the western Makong Delta. The Hòa Hảo, bolstered by French arms, revolted against the French because they believed that colonial control in Vietnam will be overthrown by Asians.

But the Hòa Hảo's alliance with the Việt Minh was short-lived and the NUF dissolved in July 1946, while Sổ became estranged from his military leaders and entered politics openly by creating the Vietnamese Democratic Socialist Party, known as Dân Xã for short. It was immediately evident that the Hòa Hảo's demands for religious autonomy and political sovereignty were irreconcilable with Việt Minh ambitions. Soon after, Sổ was preaching with growing zeal against the Việt Minh, whom he saw as posing an even greater threat to the sect than the French. The conflict with the Việt Minh devolved into a holy war. Sổ preached that every Hòa Hảo who killed ten Việt Minh would have a direct path to heaven. In 1947, Sổ was invited to a Việt Minh stronghold in the Plain of Reeds for a conciliation meeting. On the way, he and his escort were lured into a trap by the southern Việt Minh leader, Nguyễn Bình, and assassinated. To prevent the Hoahaoists from recovering his remains and erecting a martyr's shrine, the Việt Minh quartered and scattered Sổ's body; his remains were never found. This caused Hòa Hảo military leaders to go their separate ways, and the split caused an increase in violence as the various internal factions engaged in conflicts among themselves. Despite this, the Hòa Hảo declared eternal war against the Communists. Haseman argues that Sổ's assassination was a major miscalculation on the part of the Việt Minh, who falsely believed at the time that the Hòa Hảo lacked the strength to fight both the French and the Communists.

Vietnam War

South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm during a meeting with the Eisenhower, 8 May 1957.

By mid-1947, the Hoahaoists were committed to armed combat against both the French and the Việt Minh. During the First Indochina War, because of their shared antipathy against the Việt Minh, and the need to find a source of financial support to replace French wartime subsidies, Hoa Hao maintained a level of cooperation with Cao Đài and Bình Xuyên. In the months leading up to the Franco–Việt Minh ceasefire, these shared interests held the factions together. The sect had a religious following of about a million adherents, but the religion's military force numbered less than 4,000. Following Sổ's assassination, the sect expanded its territory to include the Cần Thơ Province. The Hòa Hảo, Cao Đài, and Bình Xuyên pirates established a triumvirate in the mid-1950s that grew in strength and constituted a significant threat to South Vietnam. This republic was regarded by the Hòa Hảo as just another in a series of central governments aiming to subjugate the Hòa Hảo to their rule.

The new authority in Saigon, led by President Ngô Đình Diệm, succeeded in expelling the French, a long-held ambition of the Hòa Hảo. The sect's leadership had presented him with an ultimatum in early March demanding representation in the South Vietnamese government, which he refused. During the 1955 referendum organized by Diệm, Hòa Hảo forces staged sporadic attacks on the polling stations of Cần Tho, though there was not much opposition to the referendum. In October, Hòa Hảo General Trần Văn Soái declared the referendum unconstitutional, stating his preference for a true democratic state. Diem's political maneuvers were also criticized by another Hòa Hảo general, Ba Cụt, who claimed that the referendum was an opportunity to force the people to "depose Bảo Đại and proclaim the puppet Diệm as the chief-of-state of Vietnam." Diệm reportedly received $4 million in aid from the American government and American Catholic organizations to support the referendum, which Ba Cụt stated was part of an American effort to Catholicize Vietnam. Diệm, according to Dân Xã, exploited American aid money for bribing "laborers and young students to petition in support of Diệm's ascent to chief-of-state and in favor of deposing Bảo Đại." Some historians have questioned Diệm's critics' political relevance and sincerity. According to historian Robert Nathan, there was a shift in Vietnamese politics as a result of America's replacement of France as the primary foreign influence, and a burst of democratic and pseudo-democratic ideas and propaganda by pious people who were previously been considered to being power-hungry politicians." According to Nathan, the adoption of democratic rhetoric by Hòa Hảo generals and their allies was meaningless because none of them rose to power. Diệm believed that he couldn't consolidate national power in the central government unless he first defeated the three sects' combined strength. As he was too weak to attack all of them at once, he divided the factions by setting them against each other and then defeated them one by one. He took out the Bình Xuyên bandits first, then went for the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo. The latter finally found themselves alone, facing a powerful central government with the ability to deploy armed forces into their strongholds; and despite having four fighting battalions, the Hòa Hảo were eventually destroyed by Saigon's considerably larger forces. ARVN's final operations in 1962 wiped out the Hòa Hảo military might. Despite their military setbacks, the Hòa Hảo maintained their political and religious control over the western portion of the Bassac River and Cần Thơ, the Mekong Delta's regional capital. They also preserved their arms and formed paramilitaries to defend the movement's geographical stronghold. The Hòa Hảo were too powerful a force for the Saigon government to continue indulging in political or religious warfare. The Hòa Hảo were left alone in the Miền Tây and gained tacit permission to establish a form of sovereignty in exchange of acknowledging South Vietnam's authority. They resumed their conflict with the Communists as they were no longer forced to commit their military to the campaign against the central authority.

In South Vietnam, the overthrow of the Diệm regime in 1963 generally coincides with the outbreak of large-scale guerrilla warfare during the Vietnam War. The Communists, now known as the Viet Cong, had tremendous military strength throughout the country, but their strongest positions was in the Mekong Delta. The tacit agreement with the South Vietnamese government removed the necessity for keeping a reserve force. The Hòa Hảo used their newfound independence to launch a total war on the Viet Cong. The ARVN aided the Hòa Hảo militia in their fight against the Communists by tying down Viet Cong's main force in nearby locations, allowing the militia to focus on fighting Communist guerrillas and infrastructure cadres. The anti-Communist campaign of the Hòa Hảo was accompanied by ruthless butchery, and the Communists retaliated in kind.

ARVN troops assaulting a stronghold in 1961.

The significance of Hòa Hảo was recognized by every post-Diệm administrations of South Vietnam. As a cohesive force in the Mekong Delta, the sect was now extremely valued; Hòa Hảo's military might and political influence were welcomed by the South Vietnamese government, and the Hòa Hảo provided tacit support to every post-Diệm regime in Saigon. Members of the religion gradually rose to positions of authority at all levels of government, from hamlet and village chiefs to national parliamentary representatives. By now, the Hòa Hảo had achieved their principal goal of religious independence. The orthodox Buddhist authority no longer discriminated against the sect on a religious basis.

It was the Hòa Hảo's military might, which was organized along sectarian lines, and capacity to ensure a high level of local security in the provinces it controlled that provided the sect with its most powerful influencing lever. It was a religious force in every sense, tasked with the protection of the devotees. The Hòa Hảo were able to form a local militia after South Vietnam's armed forces were restructured, securing their heartlands and denying the Viet Cong access to their agricultural riches. The Vietnamese Army was divided into three echelons: The ARVN was the regular army, and there were two echelons of territorial forces under the ARVN; the Popular Force and the Regional Force. Those enlisting the Popular Force were only allowed to be assigned to areas within the district they resided, while those enlisting the Regional Force were only allowed to be assigned to areas within the province they resided. This was a tremendous opportunity for the Hòa Hảo to establish a robust, unified force to defend their land and fight the Viet Cong efficiently. Locals used to make up the Hòa Hảo's armed force, which was financed by local taxes levied on sect members. Now, the Hòa Hảo were being paid by the Saigon government to defend themselves.

The sect's prowess in counter-guerrilla operations was most graphically exemplified by the sect's high level of security in the provinces where it operated. An Giang Province had the highest security rating of any province in South Vietnam, despite being surrounded by areas with security ratings near the bottom of the national list. Long Xuyên, the provincial capital and only 30 miles from the Cambodian border, was a Hòa Hảo stronghold with the Mekong Delta's second-highest security ranking. The region's high levels of security prompted American advisors to invite visiting dignitaries to An Giang Province, where the situation was supposedly the representative of the remarkable progress made in the war. Despite the brutal guerilla warfare that engulfed the rest of the Mekong Delta, An Giang remained a haven of peace until the very end of the conflict. No ARVN division was ever assigned to conduct full-time combat operations in the province, and its efforts were limited to preventing Communist infiltration routes and camps in neighbouring provinces. Moreover, throughout the Mekong Delta, An Giang's territorial forces had the lowest rate of desertions.

Post-war and persecution

Before the Fall of Saigon in 1975, at least two Hòa Hảo Regional Force battalions were sent to neighboring Kiên Giang Province, and hundreds of thousands of Hòa Hảo served in ARVN units across the country. Thousands of additional trained military cadres were stationed in the provinces of An Giang and Châu Đốc. A considerable number of these soldiers joined guerilla forces on the outskirts of the Hòa Hảo homeland, which was relatively unscathed by war. After the war, there were reports of a major anti-Communist military insurgency in the Mekong Delta, which was active at least as early as the mid-1970s, though not much is known due to the country's secretive nature at the time. Nevertheless, the Hòa Hảo were marked for special attention in the "re-education" process by the new government. Many Hoahaoists migrated to United States to avoid persecution. In the meanwhile, the religious leaders of the Hoa Hao have found various ways to cooperate with the local authorities. Some leaders take a more political stance and are subjected to harassment. Some leaders refuse to discuss politics, and they are left ignored in some areas. Some talk about government abuses, which causes tension as they are perceived as rebels.

A Hòa Hảo pagoda in Phú Tân.

Vietnam's government officially recognizes the Hòa Hảo religion since 1999, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hòa Hảo groups that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch. According to an article by Radio Free Asia, local rights groups say that authorities in An Giang routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hòa Hảo founder’s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hòa Hảo pagodas in An Giang and other provinces. The collective expression of particular commemorations, pilgrimage traditions, and freedom of publication are all Hoa Hao activities that are disfavored by the authorities. Two Hòa Hảo Buddhists self-immolated in 2005 to protest against religious persecution and more recently, after a wave of arrests of Hòa Hảo Buddhists, nine more were imprisoned in May 2007. Unrecognized religious groups, including Hoa Hao Buddhist groups, "face constant surveillance, harassment, and intimidation," according to a Human Rights Watch report from 2020, and their followers are "subject to public criticism, forced renunciation of faith, detention, interrogation, torture, and imprisonment." According to other sources, there have been "many instances of persecution of individuals belonging to unregistered Hoa Hao groups," including the imprisonment of six Hoahaoists who were accused of organizing an anti-government protest for up to 6 years.

Hoa Hao sources state that 67 Hoa Hao followers were under house arrest as of mid-2019. The arrests have mostly been due to individuals resisting when the police prevented invitees from attending Hoa Hao gatherings; the police viewed such resistance as "inciting a disturbance". Six members of an unregistered Hoa Hao group were beaten by plainclothes police in An Giang Province in October 2019 while traveling to protest the planned destruction of a Hoa Hao temple. According to the Annual Report 2019 of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the local authorities in the province set up roadblocks and temporary police stations to prevent followers of the unrecognized Central Church of Pure Hoa Hao Buddhism from celebrating "important holy days," including the founder's birthday, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom's (USCIRF) Annual Report 2019. On 27 November 2019, a Hoa Hao Buddhist was sentenced to eight years in prison for critical social media statements about the government, according to the Vietnamese-language newspaper An Giang.

Beliefs

A contemporary Hòa Hảo ceremony in 2009.

Hòa Hảo's spiritual practices are essentially Buddhist. It has been labelled as an example of Buddhist protestantism. It is an amalgam of Buddhism, ancestor worship, animistic rites, elements of Confucian doctrine, and indigenous Vietnamese practices. Unlike orthodox Buddhism, it eschews elaborate rituals, temples, maintains no monastic order, and teaches home practice, though the sect has a rather small number of monks. Sổ advocated that each sect member could have direct communion with the Buddha, and that inner faith was more important than external rites. The faith requires no expensive statues or instruments as the faith believes that a deceased believer who lived a "correct" life just needs a simple funeral to expedite him to the afterlife. Such precepts were critical in lowering the cost of religion for the peasantry. It has earned the descriptor "poor man's Buddhism" because of its outward simplicity.

Sổ also railed against Vietnam's social evils, prohibiting the sale of child brides, matchmaking, gambling, and the use of alcohol and opium. As a show of universal understanding, prayers are said in front of an empty table covered in red cloth. Water as a sign of cleanliness, local flowers as a sign of purity, and a small amount of incense to ward off evil spirits are the only physical offerings. Regular Hoa Hao rites are limited to four prayers a day: the first to Buddha, the second to the "Reign of the Enlightened King," which is influenced by Western messianic thought, and third to living and deceased parents and relatives. The fourth prayer is dedicated to those whom the devotee wishes to have the "will to improve themselves, to be charitable, and to be free of the chains of ignorance." The Hoahaoists celebrate three festival days each lunar year: 18 May, the anniversary of the founding of Hoa Hao Buddhism; 25 November, the founder's birthday; and 25 February, the date on which the founder "disappeared." Based on field work conducted in Hoa Hao regions of the Mekong Delta from 2016 to 2018, Vo Duy Thanh, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University's Department of Anthropology, asserts that once the religion was recognized by the state, Hoahaoists began providing community services, such as "free food, shelter, clothing, herbal medicine, and rural transport infrastructure." Hòa Hảo temples are often comprised of a simple stucco structure with a thatched roof. Religious adornments are similarly simple. Its adherents have their own flag, maroon in colour, and their own special holidays.

Non-registered Hoahaoists often reside in remote areas that are difficult to access. As a result, determining how the communities communicate with one another, or whether there is a communication network connecting them, is challenging. The Vietnamese people, except for those residing in the Mekong Delta, know virtually little about Hòa Hảo religious life.

Sects

Hòa Hảo is divided into three sects: pure, neutral, and state-recognized; all three sects follow identical practices. Although some Hoahaoists prefer not to belong to an organized sect, there are "very small number" of members of the unregistered group. According to Hòa Hảo sources, there are less than 400 followers of the state-recognized sect, roughly 400 adherents of the pure sect, and the rest are the followers of the neutral sect. One of the principles of the pure sect is to "stand up against dictatorship," and that the followers of the pure sect are "fully devoted to the teachings" of Sổ and "want to struggle to regain their legitimate interest," whereas the followers of the neutral sect "support the pure sect" but "do not want trouble with the government." Members of the Communist Party of Vietnam lead the state-recognized sect. According to The Vietnamese, an online publication based in Vietnam and founded by a group of Vietnamese activists and journalists, the pure sect is a non-recognized religious organization, and its members "are not allowed to organize their worshiping ceremonies publicly" because only the Central Executive Committee of the organization has "the right to organize such activities."

Map of the Mekong Delta within the boundaries of Vietnam.

Demographics

During its inception, the sect's appeal was primarily to the poor peasantry of the Mekong Delta. According to a 2019 study by the UK Home Office's fact-finding mission (FMM) in Vietnam, Hòa Hảo is the country's fourth largest religion. According to the US Department of State's 2019 International Religious Freedom Report, Vietnam's total population was 97.9 million, based on US government estimates; January 2018 statistics from Vietnam's Government Committee for Religious Affairs found that 1.5% of the Vietnamese population was Hoahaoist. Official estimates put the number of Hoahaoists at 1.3 million, although "unofficial" estimates put it at more than 2 million. Some other sources indicate that there are 4–5 or 8 million Hòa Hảo followers. Nowadays, the religion is exclusively concentrated in the region. Specifically, it is concentrated in An Giang Province's districts of Phú Tân and Chợ Mới, and the cities of Long Xuyên and Châu Đốc, as well as the surrounding provinces of Đồng Tháp, Kiên Giang, Cần Thơ and Vĩnh Long. In addition, Hòa Hảo devotees can be found in Ho Chi Minh City, primarily because of the migration of adherents rather than the religion's spread among the urban population. Hòa Hảo adherents are "very few" in central Vietnam and there are "almost no followers" in northern Vietnam. At the end of the 1970s, overseas communities began to emerge, mainly in the United States and Australia. The largest community of Hoahaoists are living in Santa Ana, California.

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