Mennonite Leaders Harassed in the Central Highlands

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Pleiku City, Vietnam -- On November 6, four ethnic minority Mennonite leaders from Chu Ah town near here were summoned to the town hall and told to terminate their relationship with the Vietnam Mennonite Church. Authorities described the church as a heretical religion and a "reactionary clique opposing the state."

Y Djik, a forty-year-old man, described what happened in a signed, handwritten letter sent electronically. He said that when he insisted that he had made a commitment to the church, he was slapped in the face. The head of the Pleiku city security force, a lieutenant colonel, tried to force his hands into tiny handcuffs.

"I cried out in pain," he wrote, and because he "was being treated as a common criminal." He was given nothing to eat or drink all day while officers "worked him over." Eventually he broke down and signed a statement that he would leave the Mennonite Church, though he had no intention of doing so.

The next morning he and three other men, Y Kor, Y Kat and Y Yan were forced to stand before the townspeople and read their self-criticisms. The security police demanded that all the people leave the Mennonite Church. Everyone who had gathered in Y Djik's home for worship was fined 200,000 dong, a half-month's wage.

The four men were placed under administrative surveillance for three months, and warned that they will be arrested and sent to a prison reform camp in Phu Yen for two years if they violated the orders not to meet in their homes for worship.

Though the security police denied trying to force or mistreat anyone, an officer admitted to an out-of-town person that they are under orders to deny believers the freedom to meet unless they affiliate with an official group in a designated building.

"What about the many people who are not part of an official body?" he was asked.

"You will have to ask the (government) religious committee about that," he replied.

In May, two Mennonite pastors from Ia Grai district, west of Pleiku City, were sent to a detention camp because they refused to terminate their relations with the Mennonite Church.

- Mennonite World Conference release from Vietnamese Ministries report