Vietnamese officials in Muong Cha district, Dien Bien Province, destroyed two new church buildings of ethnic minority Hmong Christians this month and threatened to tear down a third.
“H’Nguen, was forced to take her two children, H’Danh and Y-Ly, to the Nhan Hoa Police Station” on May 3 “and told she must sign documents giving custody to the government,” said International Christian Concern (ICC), an advocacy group closely monitoring the case.
Her husband, Montagnard Christian K’pa Lot, died in March of torture while being detained for publicly expressing his Christian faith and fighting for religious rights, ICC and other activists said.
In what religious freedom advocates regarded as a breakthrough in Vietnam, authorities granted rare permission to unregistered house church groups to hold a large, public Easter-related service here last night.
More than 15,000 people gathered at Tao Dan Stadium.
Leaders of the celebration and religious freedom advocates in Vietnam said the event was significant in that unregistered house churches were allowed to hold a large public celebration. They added that authorities must have felt enough pressure to consider the event less harmful than possible negative publicity from denying permission.
Two large Protestant sects in Ho Chi Minh City – the Vietnam Seventh-Day Adventist Church and the Vietnam Grace Baptist Church – have officially received certificates of religious practice.