Vietnamese Prsident
Nguyen Minh Triet
The Vietnamese officials are putting intense pressure upon a Christian widow whose husband was tortured to death by the Police to turnover her children to the government.
Speaking on this unwholesome act by the Vietnamese officials in Washington, D.C. on May 24, 2010, the International Christian Concern (ICC), Regional Manager, Logan Maurer, stated that ICC issued a press release in www.persecution.org, on April 30, documenting the beating and death of her husband, K’pa Lot, a Montagnard Christian jailed for publicly expressing his Christian faith.
Intimidation by the Security Operatives
He noted that the latest information reaching their office in United States (US) has it that on May 3, 2010, K’pa Lot;s widow, H’Nguen, was forced to take her two children, H’Danh and Y-Ly, to the Nhan Hoa Police Station and told she must sign documents giving custody of the children to the government.
Maurer stated that K’Pa’s torture and death was a tragic example of the brutal religious persecution that still occurs today in Vietnam and that he died hours later after the torture from internal bleeding adding that it is all the more telling that his wife is now being threatened for getting word out.
Need for Proper Investigation
He said that taking away her children is a desperate action by a state that is attempting to coerce her into silence adding that ICC urged the State Department to hold Vietnam accountable by investigating this terrible action against a widowed mother, as well as the events surrounding the death of her husband.
Narrating his own version of the story to International Christian Concern (www.persecution.org), a spokesman for the Montagnard Foundation, Scott Johnson, stated: “At the police station the security forces placed a document in front of H’Nguen. In this case they are harassing them and are trying to coerce her to sign the kids over to them.
He noted that the motivation on this action by the authorities is to take revenge on the widow for telling the Montagnard Foundation what Kpa Lot's last words were adding that K’pa Lot had whispered to his wife, H’Nguen, how Vietnamese officials had severely beaten him.
According to Johnson, the police told H’Nguen, that she would not be allowed to see her children until they turned 18 years and that she refused, pleading emphatically that she was fully competent to care for her children.
“For six hours the police tried to force her to sign the document until she was finally released with the children that afternoon. The document was some sort of proof they wanted to show she agreed to her children being taken. This event occurred in the village of Nhan Hoa, Cu Se district, of Gia Lai province in the Central highlands of Vietnam,” he further said.
Christian Lawyer Pushing for a free and fair Vietnam
In a related development, the Release International (RI), in its April 2010 News Letter www.releaseinternational.org, said that a Vietnamese Christian lawyer Le Thi Cong Nhan said she will continue to push for a free and fair Vietnam, after she has served three years in jail as a pro-democracy activist.
According to Release International, Nhan, who was jailed in 2007 for ‘propagandizing to destroy the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’, was released from prison on March 6 adding that she is not yet free as she will still spend the next three years under house arrest in Hanoi.
It noted that in a radio interview with Voice of America (VOA) soon after her release, the 31-year-old Lawyer said she had no intention of giving up her struggle for greater democracy in Vietnam, even if there is a further price to pay, that she'll be ready to pay for it.
Sources: International Christian Concern website: http://www.persecution.org/, Release International, website: http://www.releaseinternational.org/
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