by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - Four families in northern Vietnam have been officially expelled from their village homes because they converted to Christianity, Christian Today reports.
Xong Ba Thong, a father of one of the families from Nghe An province, told Radio Free Asia that his family put their faith in Christ in 2017 after hearing the Gospel on Christian radio, CT reports. Since then, he and the other Christian families have met with severe opposition from government authorities, Thong said.
Local officials summoned the families to the village headquarters, where they were informed their electricity would be cut off and their plows confiscated. These actions prevent the families from earning a living, CT reports.
"The day I met the district delegation, I read the law on belief and religion to them all, but they said the law has no effect in the district, this province," Thong said.
"They said that no one [in the commune] followed a religion. They also said that [by following Protestant Christianity] we have greatly affected national unity."
The four families were officially expelled from the village on June 4, after the community voted in favor of the action, CT said. The families can no longer access public services and cannot obtain vital identity documents.
“Evangelical and charismatic Protestants—along with converts from indigenous religions—often face intense pressure and violence for their faith, especially in the remote areas of central and northern Vietnam,” Open Doors USA said in a 2022 website statement.
Officially communist and atheist, Vietnam ranks 19th on the US Open Doors World Watch List 2022 of top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.