Vietnam: Police Attack House Church, Jail Leaders

Officers hit pastor, elder of house church; attempt to register denied on specious grounds.

HANOI, June 18 (Compass Direct News) – Police invaded the Sunday service of the Agape Baptist congregation in Vietnam’s Hung Yen Province on June 7 and beat worshippers, including women, and arrested a pastor and an elder. Christian sources said police put the two church leaders into separate cells, and each man was beaten by a gang of five policemen. Pastor Duong Van Tuan of the house church in Hamlet 3, Ong Dinh Commune, Khoai Chau district said that officers beat them in a way that did not leave marks: hard blows to the stomach. The congregation in Hung Yen, a small but populous province that straddles the Red River 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Hanoi, has endured harassment and attacks by police and other officials since April. Police officers disrupted worship services on April 19, bloodying Pastor Tuan’s mouth with punches, and also on May 24 and 31.  FULL STORY