The harassment of a Vietnamese Christian human rights activist, whose husband, pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh, is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence, has become “intolerable” reports CSW.
Tran Thi Hong was recently questioned by the authorities about interviews with the foreign press, her “unauthorized, unapproved and illegal” Lutheran faith and her role in Vietnamese Women for Human Rights. Her son has been arrested twice in the last month.
Hong says she was severely beaten by security agents trying to extract information about her March meeting with a US delegation led by David Saperstein, ambassador at-large on International Religious Freedom, during his recent visit to Vietnam and Thailand.
“So far my whole body hurts and it has still been too painful to work. I am still taking medicine,” Hong said, as reported by UCAN.
Twenty-nine international religious and human rights groups have called on the Vietnamese government to conduct an extensive probe into the alleged torture of Hong.
The Exec. Secretary of the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights told World Watch Monitor that Vietnam’s new “Law on Belief and Religion,” scheduled to come into effect this year, will add another layer of governmental repression and control to an already pressurised Church. “This law is not a law on religion; it’s just a law on how to manage the control of religion,” he said.