by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - A Vietnamese evangelical pastor whose body was found hanging in a cemetery in Vietnam’s Dak Lak Province is believed by local Christians to have been killed by government authorities who had forced him to renounce his faith in Christ and leave his church, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
Repeatedly harassed, beaten, and threatened by Vietnamese authorities opposed to his leadership of the Evangelical Church of Christ in the Central Highlands in Dak Lak Province, Pastor Y Bum Bya was found dead under on March 8, shortly after police requested a meeting with him to return a previously confiscated phone, ICC said.
Local authorities declared Pastor Y Bum Byar had died by suicide, but local Christians who know the high level of persecution he endured prior to his death are not convinced. A friend of the pastor’s said in a statement: “He was a very gentle man, very faithful to the Lord. People who are faithful to God will never dare to commit suicide because committing suicide is no different from killing someone else. They really hate this man. Second, their purpose of killing him was to threaten the remaining members of the Evangelical Church of Christ. For many years now, they have wanted to eliminate the church.”
Referencing the Evangelical Church of Christ in Dak Lak specifically, the US International Religious Freedom Report of 2022 said in a statement about Vietnam’s approach to religious minorities: “Government officials in different parts of the country reportedly continued to monitor, interrogate, arbitrarily detain, and discriminate against some individuals … Authorities reportedly demanded those detained to cease affiliation with unregistered religious groups and to refrain from providing ‘negative’ reports to international organizations.”
ICC added in its report: “While the Vietnamese government promotes the façade of provision of religious freedom, realities such as the repeated beating and denunciation forced upon Pastor Y Bum Bya demonstrate the lack of freedom faced by devout religious figures. We pray that a true and lawful investigation into the death of Y Bum Bya will occur in Vietnam.”