BANGKOK: A Vietnamese pastor and human rights activist was arrested on anti-state charges on Wednesday, state media reported.
Y Nuen Ayun is a leader in the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ, an unregistered independent Protestant church based in the hill tribes of the country’s Central Highlands.
The US State Department says the church and its members have faced “severe harassment” from Vietnamese authorities for engaging in allegedly anti-government activities.
Having been arrested and interrogated in the past, Y Nuen Ayun was designated as “at risk” by Project 88, a Vietnamese rights group that tracks political persecution.
State media outlet VNExpress said Wednesday that police arrested Y Nuen Ayun for “repeatedly providing fabricated information about religious activities in the Central Highlands, slandering the government and causing difficulties for the people.”
A US State Department report on religious freedom in Vietnam from 2019 said that he and other religious leaders have been publicly denounced by Vietnamese police and told they must leave their Christian churches if they wanted to remain in their communities.
The Montagnards are an ethnic minority belonging to various hill tribes from Vietnam’s Central Highlands who have long been at odds with the country’s communist government.
Montagnards sided with the US-backed South during Vietnam’s decades-long war, and some want more autonomy while others abroad advocate independence for the region.
VNExpress said another man, Huynh Ngoc Tuan, was arrested on Tuesday for “making, storing, disseminating, propagating information, documents, and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” on his Facebook page.
A court sentenced him to 10 years in prison in 1992 for anti-government activities.
Human Rights Watch said in April that Vietnam was expanding its crackdown on dissent, targeting even ordinary social media users for posts criticizing the state.
State media outlet Vietnam News Agency reported Thursday that five exiled members of outlawed political party Government of Free Vietnam were prosecuted in absentia for “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government.”
Vietnamese pastor arrested on anti-state charges
https://arab.news/28r8e
Vietnamese pastor arrested on anti-state charges
- Y Nuen Ayun is a leader in the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ
- State media outlet VNExpress said Wednesday that police arrested Y Nuen Ayun for “repeatedly providing fabricated information”
US lawmaker Fine criticized by rights advocates, Democrats after anti-Muslim remarks
- Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others
WASHINGTON: Rights advocates and multiple Democrats on Tuesday condemned anti-Muslim comments by Republican US Representative Randy Fine who said on Sunday that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Fine, whose comments against Muslims have often sparked outrage, has dismissed the criticism and since doubled down on his remarks on social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated the Republican US lawmaker from Florida as an anti-Muslim extremist last year.
“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine said on X on Sunday in a post that had over 40 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
Some high-profile Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom called for him to resign while House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Fine an “Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries also called for Republicans — who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress — to hold Fine accountable.
“To ignore this is to accept and normalize it,” Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others. Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the US in recent years due to a range of factors including hard-line immigration policies and white-supremacist rhetoric, as well as the fallout of Israel’s war in Gaza on American society.
