Release International

Christian human rights organisation Release International is calling on the international community to think again, after the United States removes Vietnam from its religious 'blacklist' of countries that persecute religious minorities.

A recent fact-finding trip to Vietnam by Release International revealed there is still significant persecution of Christians by the authorities.

In November Vietnam was welcomed into the World Trade Organisation and the US state department dropped Vietnam from its blacklist of 'countries of particular concern', reporting 'significant improvements toward advancing religious freedom'.

But Release International investigators found persecution is alive and flourishing in Vietnam. Hardest hit are unregistered and ethnic minority churches. Believers are often harassed, beaten and imprisoned for illegally preaching or organising evangelistic activities.

Government efforts to control or eradicate Christian witness have intensified as churches respond to persecution with growth and outreach. Failure to register churches is illegal, driving Christians underground in many parts of Vietnam.

In parts of the Central Highlands the government has stepped up its repression of Montagnard Christians, linking evangelicals to the Montagnard movement for return of ancestral lands, religious freedom and self-rule.

More than 300 Montagnard Christians are behind bars - including pastors, house church leaders, evangelists and Bible teachers. Sentences are up to 17 years. Christians are forbidden from gathering in large groups except in churches presided over by pastors officially recognised by the authorities. So believers often conduct their services just before dawn to avoid detection.

In October, a Montagnard Christian named Moi mysteriously disappeared. The following morning, two police came to inform villagers that Moi was dead and hanging from a tree. His skull was cracked, both arms broken, and there were cuts on his body.

Moi had been harassed by police for refusing to join the government church. Similar persecution has triggered the exodus of thousands of Central Highlanders to Cambodia over the last five years.

Elsewhere, away from international attention, Christians have been beaten, detained, and pressured by local authorities to renounce their faith. They include Hmong Christians in the northwest and Hre Christians in Quang Nai province.

Recently, police harassing Hmong Christian families were challenged by a seven-year-old girl. She protested when they helped themselves to several household pigs. The police beat her so badly beaten she was unable to walk for a week.

When her father wrote to complain he was told: 'You are a Protestant. I can't do anything for you.'

The authorities have also forced Hmong Christians to destroy their own homes if they refuse to recant their faith.

Two Hmong believers told Release International how they had been arrested and beaten many times. One had been beaten unconscious, to the point of bringing up blood.

The other had to trek through the jungle for days to get Bibles from Hanoi, Laos or even China.

'In seventeen years', said one, 'there has never been a time when we Hmong Christians have not been imprisoned for our faith. I was made to be a stranger in my own home, and my children were forced to become living orphans'. The Hmong make up around a quarter of Vietnam's evangelical believers.

'This is the reality of being an ethnic believer in Vietnam today - we are calling on the World Trade Organisation and US State Department to take note,' says Andy Dipper, Release International's CEO. 'We challenge them to look beyond the cities where Christian persecution is alive and kicking.'

Hundreds of religious and political prisoners remain behind bars in often harsh conditions. There is compelling evidence of torture and of police using electric shock batons, or allowing prison gangs to beat fellow prisoners.

The government's true intentions were brought into the open when a current training manual came to light, which betrayed a deep antagonism towards Protestant Christianity.

The manual encouraged local authorities to force Protestant Christians to renounce their faith. It called on them to mobilise the masses to fight and resist religious belief. And it instructed Communist cadres 'to get the people to give up their religion and return to their traditional beliefs and customs'.

'What will happen to these courageous people after the international spotlight on Hanoi dims?' asks Release International's Andy Dipper. 'Now Vietnam is no longer considered a "country of particular concern", could they face a fresh wave of repression and imprisonment? Will it be back to business as usual?'

Release International is supporting Christian prisoners and their families in Vietnam as part of its Prisoners of Faith ministry. You can sign up for the free monthly email alert at releaseinternational.org/prisonersoffaith.

Download the secret training manual from the Vietnamese Central Bureau of Religious Affairs which describes government policy towards protestant Christianity in the northern mountainous region.

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