ICC NOTE: In a story previously reported on April 28th , CSW-UK reported that on march 31st the wife of an imprisoned Mennonite pastor was subjected to intense interrogation due to a meeting she attended with U.S. officials. Those in attendance were members of the International Religious Freedom office at the US State Department including Ambassador-at-Large David Saperstein. The envoy was visiting Vietnam in order to record the state of religious freedom in a nation that has recently been put back on USCIRF’s annual report on International Religious Freedom. Tran Thi Hong describes her ordeal during the interrogation and the situation surrounding her husbands arrest and 11 year sentence to Radio Free Asia.  

5/13/2016 Vietnam (Radio Free Asia) – Local police in Vietnam subjected the wife of an imprisoned Mennonite pastor to an intense interrogation about a meeting she had two months ago with a U.S. religious freedom delegation that visited the Southeast Asian nation.

Tran Thi Hong, wife of pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that she received a request from local authorities where she lives in Gia Lai province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, instructing her to come to their offices in 30 minutes to “work with them”— a euphemism for an interrogation.

Her husband, a prominent activist and pastor of a banned church, is serving an 11-year prison sentence in southeastern Vietnam’s Binh Duong province for “undermining unity” by maintaining ties with dissident groups and distributing material deemed to have “slandered” government authorities.

Hong, who suffered injuries from beatings by authorities on April 14 following the March 30 meeting with members of the U.S. delegation, responded that she could not meet with them because she had yet to recover from the earlier abuse.

“About an hour later, they told some members of the commune’s Women’s Union to go to my house and force me to come there,” she said.

The Vietnam Women’s Union (VWU) is a mass organization with provincial, district and communal offices that implement policies of the communist government and programs for women and children.

“I was alone and could not resist them, so I went,” Hong said.

Ten people, including provincial police, city police, and members of the government-backed Vietnamese Fatherland Front, Women’s Union and the commune’s People’s Committee, took turns questioning her until 7:30 p.m., she said.

“I was very tired during the talk,” she said. “They checked my blood pressure and saw that I was tired. They interrogated me about my meeting with the U.S. delegation on religious freedom on March 30. They told me the meeting was a violation of Vietnamese law.”

Hong told the authorities that the meeting did not violate any domestic laws, and that she and one of her children had been stopped, harassed and robbed while they were on their way to meet the American diplomats.

“I told them about the meeting with the U.S. delegation and questioned them about whether there is anything wrong with that?” she said.

“I answered some questions and ignored others,” Hong said.

Religious freedom delegation

David Saperstein, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, led the U.S. diplomatic delegation that examined the state of religious freedom in Vietnam.

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