Vietnam: Persecuted evangelical Christians may be blamed for anti-government violence

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Ethnic evangelical Christians in Vietnam are preparing to be violently blamed for recent anti-government unrest in which nine people were murdered by armed groups earlier this month, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.

On June 11, four policemen, two government officials, and three bystanders were killed in a rare display of anti-government violence in Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes, Kuin District, Dak Lak Province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, MSN reports.

It has been assumed locally that members of the Montagnard mountain tribes carried out the attack: “There has been recent high tension between the government and Montagnard coffee plantation owners over agricultural land being confiscated for a highway and urban expansion,” MSN said in its report.

While Vietnam’s state-run media has not specified that Christians were among the young men who have now been arrested, a 12-minute Facebook video clip that is being widely circulated implies that Montagnard Christian young people were involved in the attacks. “The clip, using helicopter or drone photography, shows several well-known church buildings and Montagnard congregations of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam South (ECVN-S) and the Christian Mission Church (CMC), both well-established and legally recognized by the government,” MSN said in its report.

“The video illustrates police raids of church offices – suggesting there’s something illicit about the churches, not something illicit about the raids – along with ‘interviews’ of Christian leaders, and it casts Christian signs and literature in a poor light. The video’s origins are unclear, but it appears to be thinly disguised government propaganda,” MSN said.

Buddhist-majority Vietnam ranks 25th on the US Open Doors World Watch List 2023 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.

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