Christians from the persecuted minority Hmong tribe in Vietnam have been telling Release International how they were jailed and beaten to try to make them renounce their faith.
The plight of other Christians in Vietnam is graphically described in the latest edition of Witness magazine from Release International, which serves the persecuted church worldwide.
A team of investigators from Release International found that some of the harshest persecution in Vietnam is reserved for the ethnic Hmong people, who sided with the United States in the Vietnam War. The authorities regard evangelical Christianity as an American export intended to undermine the communist revolution.
'Stephen' and 'Paul', whose names have been changed for security reasons, described the brutal treatment meted out to them in jail as the authorities tried to force them to give up their faith.
Stephen believes the authorities murdered his brother because he refused to stop telling others about his Christian faith. The authorities jailed Stephen for three years, leaving his wife to labour in the fields and bring up their seven children on her own.
"The reason they beat my brother was because he did not deny Jesus Christ. They beat him and he died," says Stephen. He says the authorities then beat him, too, threw him out of his own home and banished him from his village.
In jail, Stephen was given hard labour, breaking rocks. If he failed to complete his quota he was beaten.
He could have taken the easy way out to avoid a jail sentence. Before being imprisoned he was told that if he signed a document renouncing his faith he could go free. But he refused.
"I never denied Jesus. Never," he said.
"I believe that even if I die I will still put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord never, never left me. Every day, when I breathe the air, I trust in the Lord."
