86,000+ Ethnic Vietnamese Mourn, Pray for State Persecutors

Tuesday, Jun. 2, 2009 Posted: 8:14:33PM HKT

Catholic priest Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly in a courtroom in Vietnam’s central province of Thua Thien Hue, Friday March 30, 2007. A Vietnamese court sentenced the dissident Catholic priest to eight years in prison for anti-government activities, after a dramatic trial Friday in which a defiant Ly shouted denunciations of the ruling Communist Party and was muzzled in court. He had no representation during his trial. He is one of several human rights prisoners the U.S. would like to see released. (Photo: AP)

The fairly recent demolition of an important symbol of the Christian faith in the central highland regions of Vietnam has led great numbers of the mostly Christian ethnic group that live there and abroad to stay within their houses, mourning and praying for three days and three nights.

The communal effort, which started on May 1st, was intended as a peaceful protest against their continual persecution by the communist Vietnamese state that led to the destruction in March of the church the Degars consider a religious landmark.

Located in Buon Ale “A” in the city of Buonmathuot in the central highlands of Vietnam, the structure was the first Degar church ever built and regarded by the people as the origin of Christianity in the region, a home church and something of a sacred historical site.

It was also meant as a collective act of repentance for failing on their part to protect the historical church and a time of prayer to God, pleading for His forgiveness in the light of their failure and the actions of the government.

Furthermore, the people prayed for their persecutors, that God would touch the hearts of Vietnamese officials so they might repent and bring an end to their persecution of the Degar people, according to Montagnard Foundation, Inc., a ministry led by an ethnic Degar and dedicated to the preservation of the indigenous people group.

Nearly 87,000 Degars from 375 villages and five provinces in the central highlands including around 700 from the Degar Church in Greensboro, North Carolina in the U.S. participated in the time of mourning and prayer.

The demolition of the historic Degar church in the central highland region of Vietnam marks the culmination of state persecution of the ethnic group.

Ethnic repression in the form of the confiscation of ancestral lands - government initiatives which have been compared to Stalin’s purges – illegal logging operations in collaboration with corrupt Cambodian and Laotian officials, assimilation policies with the intention of eliminating the Degar cultural identity and coercive birth-control programmes using threats, fines and financial incentives to force Degar women to get surgically sterilised and systematic attempts to eliminate the Degar religion – the Christian faith – by forcing Degars to renounce their faith in official ceremonies under threat of imprisonment and torture has been reported by websites like that run by Scott Johnson and rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Montagnard Foundation.

Among the cases is a Degar Christian by the name of Y-Ngo Adrong who was tortured to death by Vietnamese security forces in 2006 for using a cell phone, according to the U.S. State Department, and a Degar woman, Puih H'Bat, who was arrested on 11 April 2008 and sentenced to five years imprisonment in her home province for leading prayer services at her home, citing "destruction of the unity of the people's solidarity" - Puih refused to join the government-sanctioned Evangelical Church of Vietnam - reported reliable sources contacted by the E.U. missions in Hanoi.

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Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com