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.”