Vietnam Police Arrest Nguyen Hong Quang

Activist pastor targeted for championing religious rights and ethnic minorities.

Special to Compass Direct

HO CHI MINH CITY, June 10 (Compass) -- Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang, well-known Protestant religious liberty activist and Mennonite church leader, was arrested on the afternoon of June 8. According to witnesses, Quang was at his property on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City supervising boy scouts who were working on a road leading to the location where they often camp, when two men posing as government workers approached him casually. They then drew a pistol, aiming it at his head as they produced arrest warrants. At least two dozen police officers hiding nearby were called to help take him to the lockup at District 2 Public Security Police station.

Afterward, the officers went to the Mennonite office in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 2, which also serves as a church and the Quang home. Pushing their way into the building, they detained Quang’s wife, children and other people while they ransacked the premises. They seized personal papers, legal house ownership documents, money, computers, and human rights files compiled by Quang and his assistants.

Leaders of the Vietnam Evangelical Fellowship (VEF), pastors Pham Dinh Nhan, Vo Van Lac and Bui Thanh Se, went to the Mennonite church but were not allowed past a police cordon surrounding the place. The men plan to mobilize support for Pastor Quang, just as he has unfailingly done when they and their churches have been threatened by the state.

Quang serves as head of the VEF’s legal committee and legal advisor to the group.

The VEF leaders’ first thought was that one or more of the four Mennonite church workers arrested on March 2 may have cracked under pressure or torture and provided “evidence” to arrest Quang. A Vietnamese pastor close to the case told Compass yesterday that he understood that Quang had been charged with “conspiring to get others to resist officers of the law doing their duty.” His assistant, Truong Tri Hien, was placed under house arrest.

An altercation on March 2 between Mennonite leaders and undercover police officers led to the arrest of church elder Nguyen Hieu Nghia. Following reports that Elder Nghia was beaten after being detained, three evangelists went to the police precinct to inquire about Elder Nghia. (See Compass Direct, “Vietnamese Evangelists Severely Beaten in Police Custody,” March 8, 2003.)

The three men, Nguyen Thanh Nhan, Pham Ngoc Thach and Nguyen van Phuong, were subsequently arrested at the station. Two of them, Thach and Nhan, were severely beaten by several officers. Phuong’s sister-in-law and Mrs. Quang, who went to the police station to inquire about the men, saw Nghia, Thach and Nhan being hastily moved as they got there. They learned that Thach had been beaten unconscious. According to reports that emerged later, his life was actually in danger at that point.

Quang has called attention to the illegal detention and abuse of the three evangelists, still being held without formal charges more than three months after their arrest. On June 25, he released a substantial report addressed to Mennonite bodies and other churches both in the country and internationally. The report charges that public security officers of Ho Chi Minh City District 2 violated at least four sections of the criminal code on “temporary imprisonment.”

Also, Quang became involved last year with the family of Vietnam’s best known political prisoner, Father Nguyen Van Ly. Quang attempted to defend young relatives of Father Ly who are imprisoned for breaching national security laws by publishing the news of their uncle’s abuse and long prison term.

Quang, 45, is originally from Quang Ngai Province. He is married with three children under 10 years of age and was called to Christian ministry in 1981. His father, who had served the previous government, was assassinated in a re-education camp shortly after the 1975 communist takeover.

Quang’s mother was unwell at the time and died of shock on hearing of her husband’s murder. One brother was killed by a communist artillery bombardment in 1974 while still a student. Another brother died of hardships suffered after a forced move to new economic zone shortly after the war ended.

During the late 1990s, Quang studied law at the National University in Ho Chi Minh City. He has used his legal training to show how authorities consistently violate Vietnam’s laws in abusing religious liberty and other human rights.

Quang has displayed particular sympathy for vulnerable ethnic minorities who have suffered the massive loss of ancestral lands to unscrupulous officials. Quang’s legal training and ceaseless confrontations of injustice have led Vietnamese officials to identify him as a particularly tenacious adversary. He believes that authorities have made at least four attempts on his life.

A trusted source told Compass, “Should Quang’s case go to a sham trial, as is likely under Vietnam’s unjust system, he will join Father Nguyen Van Ly as one of Vietnam’s best known prisoners of conscience.

“Pastor Quang’s family and colleagues ask that we make a loud noise in the world about this injustice. This arrest is further evidence -- as if it were needed -- that Vietnam is entirely unscrupulous in trying to silence those who dare speak the truth about state-sponsored religious repression and other human rights abuses.”

The day before his arrest, Quang wrote presciently to a friend in North America. “The Church is now on stormy seas but the boat still goes out. The Lord enables the brothers to row together. Be at peace. I ask you and the Church to pray for us.”