On Christmas Eve, Seventeen houses of the minority Christian community were set ablaze in Bangladesh. Villagers told authorities that “unidentified” people torched their houses. However, the police have claimed that the arson could be linked to a “long-running rivalry between two groups of the (same) community“. Four people were arrested.
At the time most of the villagers were attending the midnight mass at a church in a nearby village.7 houses were gutted and two others were partially damaged. One community elder blamed a Bengali Muslim for the attack. Police were directed to “unearth the motive behind the attack at the earliest.” Police have stepped up security and are continuing to examine the events.
In nearby Vietnam, Y Hung Ayun, a 62-year-old pastor, was shot with rubber bullets by the passenger of a motorcycle that pulled up alongside him as he was traveling home. He was hit twice in the knee. After the attack, the masked riders sped away. Ayun is the second independent pastor in recent months, to be shot in the legs as persecution ramps up in Vietnam.
Ayun states that the attack left his legs swollen and bruised. He did not report the incident, but the authorities still came to interview him. This raises questions as to the involvement of the police in the shooting. Y Hung Ayun served 9 years in prison for “undermining the national solidarity policy. After he completed his parole in 2017, he began work as a pastor.
The Pastor was surprised by the violence as he has no enemies or feuds. “They attacked me to warn that I should withdraw [from the independent house church] and return to the [government-approved] Evangelical Church of Vietnam,” he theorized. The Vietnamese Government requires all churches to register with the government. Independent churches face immense scrutiny and pastors are often arrested if they refuse to comply.
Independent Churches, like the one Y Hung Ayun pastors, are monitored closely by the state. Harassment, like the attack on Ayun, is common. The police have installed security cameras to monitor Ayun’s home and require him to notify them when he leaves the immediate area where he lives. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, reports that officials have stolen bibles, electronics, and cash from church leaders.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a charity devoted to tracking Christian persecution, has been following the incident. The President of the organization, Mervyn Thomas said: ‘CSW is highly concerned at this attack on Pastor Y Hung Ayun which appears to have been intended to pressure him to abandon his house church and return to the government-sanctioned Evangelical Church of Vietnam.”
He also went on: “We call for a swift investigation into this incident, ensuring that Pastor Ayun’s assailants are brought to justice. We also reiterate to the Vietnamese government that it must revise regulations and legislation about religion to ensure that they align with international standards on the right to freedom of religion or belief and that all Vietnamese citizens are afforded the full enjoyment of this right in law and practice.”