Trial of Vietnamese Church Leader Set for January 13
Pastor arrested for resisting officers raiding a prayer meeting at his home.
Special to Compass Direct
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, January 7 (Compass) -- The trial of a Vietnamese house church leader arrested last August for “resisting an officer doing his duty” is set to begin January 13, sources said.
Pastor Bui Van Ba, general secretary of the Full Gospel House Church organization, will be tried before the People’s Court of District 11 in Ho Chi Minh City. Ba has been under house arrest since police raided a prayer meeting at his home on August 18, 2003.
On that date, about 25 Christians were attending a prayer meeting on the second level of the Ba home when a local public security officer named Tran Van Nhe entered without permission and demanded to search the house. Pastor Ba was not home at the time, and his wife, May, tried to prevent the police from going upstairs. The officer threw her aside and went upstairs, at the same time calling on his cell phone for reinforcements. Another pastor, Nguyen Nhu Hanh, took some photos.
Additional police quickly arrived. They grabbed Pastor Hanh, hitting his head repeatedly against a cement wall and destroyed the camera they had torn from his hand. The police then began slapping and punching the other Christians, sources said. Pastor Ba’s wife, who had been pushed around violently, fainted from severe chest pains.
Pastor Ba arrived home at the peak of the altercation. Sources said he tried to reason with the police, but when he realized his wife’s precarious condition, his first concern was to get her to a hospital. Security police refused to allow her to be taken away.
When the assembled Christians declared their support for Pastor Ba in his effort to get his wife to a hospital, the security police attacked Pastor Ba, beating him violently and cuffing him. The police restrained the children of Pastor and Mrs. Ba, roughly clamping their hands over the mouths of children crying at the sight of their father’s beating. Police then hauled Pastor Ba to the station, along with Pastor Hanh and seven others.
Pastor Vo Van Lac then tried to convince the police to let him take Pastor Ba’s wife to the hospital. They tried to prevent him at gunpoint. When he told the police he was unafraid and would take her to emergency anyway, they locked the door with a lock of their own. Pastor Lac persisted and after much difficulty managed to take her to the emergency ward at the hospital.
At the police station, Pastor Ba was chained to a post while a very large policeman in civilian clothes approached and punched him three times in the head. Several police officers, including the local chief, stood by menacingly, openly making up a false story for their report.
In a police report published three months after the event, the police said, “When Mrs. May fainted, she was quickly taken to emergency by family members.”
Pastor Ba was next taken to another room and interrogated for an hour by four officers. He was told he would be held for three days of investigation. Then police stripped him of his clothes and threw him into a cell without a bed, blankets or a mosquito net. The seven other Christians were held and questioned for 12 hours before being charged with administrative violations and released.
Pastors Ba and Hanh were released from prison on August 19 after being held for 36 hours; Pastor Hanh with an administrative charge and Pastor Ba put under house arrest.
Vietnamese Christians advising Pastor Ba have used Vietnamese law to build a legal case asserting that it was the rights of Pastor Ba and family and the Christians at the prayer meeting that were violated. But Vietnam’s legal system will not allow Pastor Ba’s advisors to help defend him.
For Vietnam’s house churches, this is standard treatment, an experienced Vietnam watcher told Compass, despite the government’s guarantee of religious freedom.
In similar situations in the past, foreign embassies and news services have asked to send observers to trials like Pastor Ba’s scheduled for next week, but have been denied access.
Copyright 2004 Compass Direct
11:41:35 AM 
|
