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Since the 1975 communist takeover of Vietnam, officials have harassed evangelicals. In 2001, however, the government changed its tactics, granting official recognition to ecvn South, the country's largest Protestant body, and allowing the group to hold its first assembly in February 2001.

ecvn South members learned from a leaked document how communist authorities intended to control the ecvn assembly by installing government-friendly leaders. But assembly delegates refused to vote for the pro-government candidates. Instead, delegates elected Thieu, a respected professor of theology. Thieu, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary north of Boston, said his challenge was to "rebuild a structure out of complete rubble."

During the May visit, someone questioned Thieu about ecvn South, which represents two-thirds of Vietnam's 1.1 million evangelicals. Thieu "told his U.S. counterparts it is time to focus on a better future, not [to] dwell on the religious problems and restrictions of the past," according to the umns account. umns also quoted Thieu as saying that Vietnam has 80 Protestant churches. There are actually hundreds of Protestant congregations in Vietnam. When back in Vietnam, Thieu was questioned privately about citing the figure of 80 Protestant congregations. "I said that, speaking only for the ecvn South, there are 800 churches," the chagrined leader said, "and used that number to include the Montagnard churches." Vietnamese authorities refuse to recognize the Montagnard membership, so the numerical "mistake" is no mere slip of an interpreter's tongue in New York.

Close observers of Vietnam suspect that authorities pressured Thieu to travel to the United States precisely in order to damage his reputation among his evangelical peers. A small number of pastors, sympathetic with the government, circulated letters accusing him and others of ineffectiveness.

Thieu, 60, died of heart failure on June 24, after 17 months in office and seven weeks after his visit to America. Four days later, an estimated 2,000 Christians attended his funeral in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). "Thieu was forced to come from Vietnam and to speak against his own conscience," Nam Tuan Kieu, a Vietnamese American pastor, told Congressmen in July. Duong Thanh, Thieu's likely successor and first vice president of ecvn South, is an elderly and physically infirm pastor. Contrary to the propaganda, recent reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reveal pervasive repression of religious belief and practice outside officially permitted outlets.

In April, Human Rights Watch published a groundbreaking 200-page report, Repression of Montagnards: Conflict over Land and Religion in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Christians in this minority group have long constituted a large percentage of Vietnam's evangelicals. Some tribal churches have grown tenfold since 1975. There are an estimated 500,000 Montagnard Christians in the Central Highlands.

Several thousand Montagnards, predominantly Christians, shocked Vietnam's authorities in February 2001 when they peacefully protested religious oppression and the illegal seizure of tribal lands by ethnic Vietnamese settlers. The protesters called for land reform and religious freedom. Communist authorities swiftly responded with a brutal crackdown. Dozens have been jailed, and hundreds of refugees have fled across the border to Cambodia. The incident has been called "Vietnam's Tiananmen Square," a reference to China's bloody repression in 1989.

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September 9 2002, Vol. 46, No. 10