A pastor's son in Vietnam reveals how authorities imprisoned and pressured his father repeatedly to renounce his faith - and how they also pressured him and their family to turn their backs on Christ as well.
As reported by Christian Post, the father, Pastor Y Yich was a resident of Gia Lai province in the central highlands of Vietnam, was arrested in 2008 for demanding land and freedom of religion for the Montagnard people of Vietnam.
Right after his release in 2013, he was arrested yet again in the same year and was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment in An Phuoc prison in the Binh Duong province.
In the 2020 Annual Report released by USCIRF, the Hmong and Montagnard Christians are among the Christians regularly harassed, detailed or banished because of their faith. Open Doors USA ranked Vietnam as one of the worst places for Christians with persecution coming from both tribal leaders and the government.
Pastor Y Yich's son, Mrui, shared his experience in an interview with Radio Free Asia. It would seem that despite his father's imprisonment, the persecution to their family continued to the point of getting death threats just for him to abandon his faith.
"My dad was arrested in 2013 for opposing the state, [authorities] forced him to abandon his faith. Village, district officers continuously visit our home to monitor us, they invited [meaning summoned] me five, six times, threatened to bash me and kill me, forcing me to abandon my faith."
Another concern of Mrui is the obvious wearing down of human rights in the country especially with ethnic minorities.
Mrui adds, "My family suffers from serious hardship, the Vietnamese authorities oppresses and not respecting the human rights of [Vietnamese] ethnic minorities."
The Vietnamese People's Evangelical Fellowship said that Pastor Y Yich has been denied medical treatment. The pastor suffers from stomach inflammation, high blood pressure and rheumatism. Even when his family brought him medicine to the facility, prison authorities have been reported to refuse to deliver it to him.
In another story, Mrui recounts how prison officers badly beat his father that it caused all of his teeth to fall out.
USCIRF
Human Rights Watch reported in June that the crackdown of human rights in Vietnam is getting more intense since the end of 2019.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia told RFA that Vietnam has one of the worst records of human rights in Southeast Asia.
"Vietnam has one of the worst human rights records in Southeast Asia. It has some of the largest number of political prisoners and is sentencing people to extremely long prison terms."
According to HRW, they are aware of "at least 150 people convicted for exercising their rights to freedom of expression or association and currently in prison."
An addition of 15 more people is facing detention on pretrial.
"We're seeing people sent to prison for 12 years or 14 years for basically exercising their civil and political rights or the right to freedom of expression, the right to peaceful public assembly, and the right to associate without government permission."
The intensifying crackdowns of human rights violation are only getting worse with the preoccupation of many countries that could help Christians in Vietnam due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
