The recent sentencing of an evangelical Mennonite Pastor and five believers has drawn protest from human rights groups and the Christian community<\/b><\/p>\n
The recent sentencing of an evangelical Mennonite Pastor and five believers has drawn protest from human rights groups and the Christian community. The Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang, the secretary general of the Mennonite Church and an active member of the Vietnamese Evangelical Fellowship, was sentenced to three years in prison for \u201cinciting people to obstruct officials from carrying out their duties\u201d after a half-day trial at the Ho Chi Minh City\u2019s People\u2019s Court on Nov. 12.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] strongly condemn the unfair prison sentence handed down on several members of the banned Vietnamese Evangelical Mennonite Church simply for the peaceful exercise of their religious beliefs,\u201d said the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR) in a statement released shortly after the sentencing.<\/p>\n
Nguyen, 45, was arrested on June 8 as he was supervising boy scouts on his property on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. Though the Mennonite Church is considered illegal by the Vietnamese government, judicial authorities said that he was not arrested for religious reasons, but because he was \u201cinciting people to obstruct officials from carryout out their duties.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to VCHR, Nguyen had held a sit-in in December 2003 at a Police station in Ho Chi Minh City along with other church leaders to protest the detention of 19 Christians for distributing religious pamphlets at the SEA Games in Ho Chi Minh City.<\/p>\n
Nguyen also called attention to the illegal detention and abuse of the three evangelists, that were being held without formal charges more than three months after their arrest. On June 25, he released a substantial report addressed to Mennonite bodies and other churches both in the country and internationally. The report charged that public security officers of Ho Chi Minh City District 2 violated at least four sections of the criminal code on \u201ctemporary imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the four-hour trial at the Ho Chi Minh City People\u2019s Court, Nguyen was sentenced to three years imprisonment and his co-workers\u2014Pham Ngoc Thach, Nguyen Van Phuong, Le Thi Hong Lien, Ngyuen Thanh Nhan, and Hieu Nghia\u2014were given sentences ranging from 9 months to 2 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is extremely disturbing to see how the Hanoi regime, which prides itself on conducting human rights dialogues with the United States, the European Union and other democratic nations, continues to repress Vietnam\u2019s peaceful religious communities in flagrant violations of its own Constitution and laws\u201d, declared Vo Van Ai, President of VCHR.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust one month ago, at the Fifth ASEM Summit in Hanoi, our Committee submitted a list of 23 prisoners of conscience to the EU, and we were happy to learn that the EU Presidency took up our concerns and privately urged Hanoi to release a number of detained dissidents,\u201d Vo added. \u201cToday, it is clear that Hanoi totally disregards the friendly appeals made by its Western partners, and worse still, tramples upon the constitutional rights of its own citizens\u201d. <\/p>\n
The trial came just two days after the publication of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office\u2019s Annual Human Rights Report, which expressed \u201cparticular concern about the plight of non-recognized Buddhist and Protestant groups\u201d in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
The UK FCO\u2019s report follows several other strong protests from the international community about Vietnam\u2019s violations of religious freedom.<\/p>\n
Currently Vietnam is ranked No. 4 on Open Doors\u2019 World Watch List of countries where persecution is the worst, and is also listed as a \u201ccountry of particular concern\u201d by the U.S. State Department\u2019s in their annual International Religious Freedom Report, recently released on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recent sentencing of an evangelical Mennonite Pastor and five believers has drawn protest from human rights groups and the Christian community The recent sentencing of an evangelical Mennonite Pastor and five believers has drawn protest from human rights groups and the Christian community. The Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang, the secretary general of the Mennonite …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-press-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}