Official harassment of some churches and missionaries in Vietnam has continued, four months after the United States formally re-established diplomatic ties with the Southeast Asian nation (CT, Aug. 14, 1995, p. 54).
On September 17, authorities in the southern highland city of Dalat raided a local church affiliated with Dinh Thien Tu’s unsanctioned house-church movement, the nation’s largest autonomous Protestant movement. The movement’s leaders are under police surveillance. A similar raid on another Dalat house church affiliated with Tu’s movement occurred in August.
Also in August, police closed a state-sanctioned Baptist church in Dalat after finding Christian literature that had been printed in Vietnam. Sources said the church had been operating openly for the past year without incident.
The raid occurred just two weeks after police suspended a conference of Baptists in the southern coastal city of Vung Tau. Approximately 90 Baptist church workers attending the conference were detained and interrogated about the “illegal assembly.”
Vietnamese-American pastor An Doan Sauveur and a Vietnamese-Canadian colleague were detained on September 10 and held under house arrest for three days by police in the northern city of Haiphong for “meeting and worshiping in a restricted military area” with 70 local Christians. The two Christians were released after being fined and ordered to leave the country.
Copyright © 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
