The US-based advocacy group Montagnard Foundation Incorporated (MFI) told BosNewsLife that the fire came hours after the woman, identified as H’Aner, "was summoned to the Vietnamese security police station" at the De Ar commune on October 15, for questioning regarding her husband Siu Di, who currently resides in the United States. Her husband apparently left Vietnam because of religious persecution, and is currently involved in MFI
activities.
She was reportedly asked: "Why hasn’t your husband, Siu Di, filed any papers to sponsor you and children to go to the United States?". MFI said she replied: “We have no desire to go live with him in the United States as this is our ancestral land…We don’t want to leave our loved ones behind."
Later that October 15 night, while H’Aner and her three children, H’Aman, 12, H’Anai,9 and H’Ananh 7, were sleeping, "their home was set on fire," by Vietnamese security police, MFI said. "The house was completely destroyed…H’Aner suffered severe burns to her left hand and arm, and continues to recover. However the severity of her injuries makes it difficult for to care for her family," MFI said.” The scars will remind her daily of the brutality of the Vietnamese security police, which could have easily taken the lives of her family and herself."
HUNDREDS STILL DETAINED
Over 300 Degar Montagnards are reportedly imprisoned across Vietnam, in many cases because of their Christian and human rights activities, rights groups say. Vietnamese authorities have strongly denied rights abuses and accuses MFI and other groups of "propaganda." News of the attack came on the heels of news that jailed Christian lawyers Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, who have defended Christians reportedly persecuted for their faith, had their sentences reduced by one year, apparently due to international pressure.
Last month they reportedly received a rarely granted visit from non-family members when four pastors managed to see them on January 31. Leading the visit was Nguyen Van Quang, seen as a controversial former prisoner-of-conscience himself who pastors a Ho Chi Minh City church to which the government has denied registration. He and three ethnic minority Degar Montagnard pastors were reportedly allowed the visit at the Nam Ha prison in Nam Dinh, south of Hanoi.
Yet UK-based rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said it was disappointed that the lawyers were not after their appeal hearing at the Supreme People’s Court.
LONG PRISON TERMS
The rights lawyers were sentenced in May 2007 to prison terms of five years and four years respectively for “disseminating slanderous and libelous information against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 88 of the nation’s Criminal Code. Both sentences were cut by one year following the appeal hearing on January 10. government-led disinformation campaign, and that his sentencing had been "the result of sloppy and prejudicial work by the prosecutorial organs".
In published remarks, CSW’s National Director, Stuart Windsor, said, “We are disappointed that that the pair were not freed following the appeal hearing, as had been hoped. However, the reduction in their sentences is positive. We believe that lawyers Dai and Nhan have been imprisoned in order to be silenced, and call for their immediate and unconditional release."
Vietnam, still run by Communists with an atheistic philosophy, has come under international to extend economic reforms to other areas, including religion and politics.
