This month’s operation in Vietnam’s Central Highlands included the arrest of R’com H’Glah, because she refused to join the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN) and was involved inn spreading Christianity, said Kok Ksor, president of advocacy group Montagnard Foundation Incorporated (MFI).
The 43-year old woman “has been leading many people in her village and the surrounding villages” of Cu Pah district, in Gialai province, “to Christ by encouraging people to pray and reading God’s word in her home,” Ksor told BosNewsLife. Most of the ethnic Degar Montagnards living in the region are Christians.
He said she was detained May 17 when some 200 riot police and soldiers allegedly equipped with helmets, shields, electrical batons and teargas, blocked "every roads and trails surrounding [her] village of Ploi Rwai.," before she was transferred to a nearby prison facility.
CRACKDOWN
Ksor added that the crackdown began May 11 when Vietnamese security police allegedly first visited Ploi Rwai village, summoning 70 Degar Christians. They were were told that "all Degar Montagnard Christians must sign a contract agreeing to stop conducting religious services in their home and only follow the ECVN," he said. Yet, they refused to sign the agreement, “even though the police told them that anyone who refused to accept this church would be imprisoned and tortured," Ksor claimed.
On May 12, Communist officials summoned another group of Degar Christians from the same area as they held church services in their homes, according to MFI. Some 35 Degar Christians were told by Vietnamese security police to end their activities and follow the ECVN, said Ksor.
He said police even accused the Christians of worshipping him, charges the believers denied with one woman, R’com H’Glah, reportedly saying: “We worship God we do not worship Ksor Kok…He is human like us he himself believes in God and worships God like we do.”
Ksor, who now lives in the United States, is well-known in the country as he and fellow Degar Montagnards supported American forces during the Vietnam War, before fleeing in 1975, the day before the fall of Saigon. His MFI group has been condemned by authorities as spreading "false rumours" and "Western propaganda."
CHRISTIANS
Ksor, whose organization has close contacts with allegedly persecuted Christians in the Central Highlands, said many Degar Montagnard refuse to join the official church as it is “bordering on government worship.”
The Degar Montagnards, he said, "do not want a government-imposed religion," but an independent church. Hundreds of Degar Montagnard Christians have been imprisoned in recent years, according to MFI and other human rights groups.
Ksor said however that many believers do not regret the choices they made. Our Lord Jesus said in the Bible book of Luke 9:23 "If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." He did not promise us to have a good life here on planet earth, but to suffer for others like our Lord Jesus did for all of us."
