Vietnam (MNN) — In violation of Vietnam's new religion policy, authorities in Vietnam's far north are pressuring new Christians among the Hmong minority to recant their faith and to re-establish ancestral altars, according to area church leaders.
Compass Direct reports that when the authorities in the region discovered villagers had converted to Christianity, they sent "work teams" in to apply pressure, saying the government considered becoming a Christian a very serious offense.
Patrick Klein, founder of
Vision Beyond Borders, recently returned from Vietnam and describes the persecution. "They're trying to get these people to let go of their tribal identities, learn Vietnamese, learn Vietnamese culture, and everything else. There's a lot of persecution, especially the Hmong people who helped the CIA during the Vietnam War."
It's a combination of religious and ethnic persecution, says Klein. "A lot of it is Christian persecution, because of lot of these tribal people have become Christians. [They're seen as] puppets for the U.S. government or for the British, trying to overthrow the government. And that's not the case at all," says Klein.
He says many of the Hmong are fleeing. "They're going into Laos. A lot of have gone into Cambodia."
Klein says there are atrocities being reported. "They have bounty hunters that go looking for these people. I think it's $44 a head they get for everyone they catch. And, what they're doing is cutting the Achilles tendon on the men and doing horrible things to the women, and then tying them up and throwing them into the river to drown."
Despite the persecution, the church is growing.
The needs of these churches are great, according to a pastor Vision Beyond Borders works with. "The man we work with has actually spent seven years and three months in prison. Now, he oversees 500 churches. The day before we saw him, he had been with some Hmong pastors, and they said, 'Pastor, we really need more Bibles. Can you get us more Bibles?'"
In God's providence, Klein and others would deliver 1,000 Bibles the very next day.
Klein is asking Christians to pray for the Hmong believers, and pray that the Vietnamese government will stop harassing these tribal peoples.
If you would like to help Vision Beyond Borders deliver Bibles to Vietnam, click here.
