Passion and Pain

Week Nine: Vietnam Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:2-3).

Vietnam is a country of approximately 80 million people, ruled by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). An estimated 6 to 7 million Roman Catholics live there and an estimated 1 million, more than half of whom belong to unregistered evangelical ―house-churches.‖ The death in September 2002 of Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who spent thirteen years in Communist prisons, nine of those in solitary confinement, reminds us of the price Christians have paid for their faith.

Persecution of Christians has continued since the Communists took control of South Vietnam in 1975.

Vietnamese security forces often employ martial law, beatings, and teargas in a systematic attempt to eliminate the Christian faith. One common practice is to force Christians to renounce their faith. Reports of this practice have increased in recent years, particularly as it is applied against Hmong Protestant Christians in several northwestern villages, and Montagnards (also known as the Degar people), of the Central Highlands. Officials there have also demolished churches, detained, beaten, harassed people, and extorted goods, livestock, and money from Protestant believers. In April 2002, officials cut off electricity to the homes of ethnic Ede villagers in the Phu Yen Province after they refused to renounce Christianity. Members of Hmong and Montagnard Christian populations have also been charged with ―practising religion illegally‖. Authorities frequently invoke provisions of the penal code that allow for jail terms of up to three years for ―abusing freedom of speech, press, or religion‖.

At a Government conference in 2001, the CPV reportedly made clear its goal to eliminate Christianity among the Hmong tribes people before its follow-up conference in 2005. Many Hmong Christian leaders have fled their villages and now live in the forest or in caves to escape the religious persecution directed against them. At least twenty Hmong pastors have been imprisoned in Vietnam for their Christian faith.

On December 29, 2002, police used noxious gas to break up a Christian worship gathering attended by forty Hmong believers in Dien Bien Dong. Twenty were hospitalized, and the hospital was surrounded by police, apparently to prevent their escape after release.

The Montagnards are indigenous hill tribes comprising over thirty tribal groups of an estimated six hundred thousand people based in the Central Highlands. About four thousand of these are Christians, both Protestant and Catholic. Communist authorities have singled out Montagnards for persecution both because they assisted the USArmy during the Vietnam War, and because of their Christian faith.

In December 2001, police in Buon Cuor Knia village in Dak Lak Province beat and shocked with electric wires twelve Christians who were being punished for having attempted to flee