Vietnam Police Raid Prayer Meeting at House of Imprisoned Church Leader

Police disbanded a women's prayer meeting in Ho Chi Minh City at the home of a jailed Vietnamese Church leader and briefly detained 10 men who came to their aid, a media agency reported Thursday.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Le Thi Phu Dung — wife of pastor Nguyen Hong Quang, outspoken general secretary of the Vietnamese Mennonite Church — reported that thirty-two Mennonite women were meeting for prayer on March 8th when local police entered the private home where they were gathered and told them to disperse.

Although one of the women told the authorities that Prime Minister Phan Van Khai had issued a decree that their right of religious freedom is to be respected and they are to be helped, the police said that there had not yet been any permission and that they were not allowed to have religious activities in Quang' s house.

Le, who hosted the event, said none of the women were arrested but 10 men were taken into custody and released later the same day.

She and three women were, however, reportedly asked to sign confessions.

RFA reports that no comment was immediately available from Vietnamese authorities, which human rights groups have accused of heavy-handed suppression of Protestants.

According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, Mennonites in Vietnam "have come under fire in recent years, in part because of the outspoken and at times confrontational style of Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang [who] has publicly criticised the arrests of religious and political dissidents, defended land rights cases of farmers from the provinces and used the Internet to call for religious freedom."

Quang, who was also an active member of the Vietnamese Evangelical Fellowship, was one of the "Mennonite Six" convicted on 12th November 2004 for "inciting people to obstruct officials from carrying out their duties."

Through three of the six have been released in recent months, Voice of the Marytrs reported recently that the appeal hearing for Quang and Pham Ngoc Thach, which were postponed from their original February 2nd court date, have still not been rescheduled.

Meanwhile, the appeal of the one-year sentence of Le Thi Hong Lien, the sole woman among six Mennonite church workers, cannot proceed after she reportedly suffered a mental breakdown because of the treatment she had received in prison.




Kenneth Chan
Ecumenical Press