March 31, 2011
“The police would get drunk, wake me up, and question me and beat me,” said an indigenous minority Christian, arrested while demonstrating for religious freedom and land rights. “The handcuffs were like wire. They used electric shock on me. They would shock me on my knees, saying you used these legs to walk to the demonstration.” Repeated blows to his head left him partially deaf.
The Vietnamese government has ratcheted up its crackdown on indigenous minority Christians from its Central Highlands. Officials particularly target those who worship in independent “house churches,” where Christians gather in someone’s home, claiming they use religion as a cover for an independence movement.
In a new report, Human Rights Watch documents how authorities have dissolved house church gatherings, forced hundreds of indigenous Catholics and Protestants to renounce their religion publicly, and sealed the border to prevent asylum seekers from fleeing to Cambodia.
We found that special “political security” units, together with police, interrogate people suspected of political activism or leading unregistered house churches. More than 70 indigenous Christians were detained or arrested in 2010, and more than 250 are known to be imprisoned on national security charges.
