Two Laos Tribal Christians Detained For Refusing To Deny Christ

[quaoar]

http://www.bosnewslife.com/index.php?hBx%2FG6WNzLQbsAqIA%2FJZcqdp4Z0d4i0cwFpMXbEArFyoG3JYvqeJsMyo%2BAsn2qNp41sVsnlpprM%3D

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, BosNewsLife
VIENTIANE, LAOS (BosNewsLife)-- A Christian human rights watchdog confirmed Friday, April 29, that 22 tribal Christians in Laos have been released from jail after being forced to "deny Christ" in an affidavit, but it expressed concern about two believers who remain detained "for refusing to sign" the document.

[Atlas Mugged]

1. What fucking century is this?????????????

n/t

[rodeodance]

2. Geech, I thought you were talking about tribes in Loas, NM!!

[Demit]

3. Um, do you mean Taos, New Mexico? Unless there is a Laos?

[rodeodance]

4. yes, I read the subject line too fast.

[orpupilofnature57]

5. Laos, taos, see what a theocracy can do.And how about that help WE

Gave southeast Asia, with their Democracy?

[Igel]

14. Laos is hardly a theocracy.

Unless you consider communism a religion.

[coda]

6. Sounds like 22 were detained

must be some rogue Rouge hangers-on.



-

Summary of Religious Bodies in Cambodia*
Buddhist 84.7%
Chinese Folk-religions 4.7%
Ethnoreligions 4.4%
Nonreligious 2.4%
Muslims 2.3%
Christian 1.1%
Independent 0.7.7%
Roman Catholic 0.2%
Protestant 0.2%
New-Religions 0.3%
Hindu 0.3%
Atheists 0.3%
Baha'i 0.1%
Double-affiliation <0.4%>
*Source: World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001, Oxford University Press. Vol 1: p 77
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/nationprofiles/Cambodia/rbodies.html

=====

Buddhism has been the national religion since the 15th century. The Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate all religion; 90 per cent of Christians and most Buddhist monks perished.


=====
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35394.htm

Cambodia

International Religious Freedom Report 2004
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in practice. However, Buddhism is the state religion.

The generally amicable relationship among the religions in society contributed to religious freedom.


Religious Demography

The country has a total area of approximately 67,000 square miles, and its population is approximately 13.4 million. Approximately 93 percent of the population is Hinayana, or Theravada, Buddhist. The Buddhist tradition is widespread and active in all provinces, with an estimated 4,100 pagodas throughout the country. Since the vast majority of ethnic Khmer Cambodians are Buddhist, there is a close association between Buddhism, Khmer cultural traditions, and daily life. Adherence to Buddhism generally is considered intrinsic to the country's ethnic and cultural identity. The remainder of the population includes approximately 700,000 Muslims, predominantly ethnic Chams, who generally are located in towns and rural fishing villages on the banks of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers and in Kampot province.


The country's small Christian community, although growing, constitutes slightly more than 1 percent of the population. More than 100 separate Christian organizations or denominations operate freely throughout the country and include more than 1,000 congregations.



Restrictions on Religious Freedom

Government policy and practice contributed to the generally free practice of religion. Foreign missionary groups generally operated freely throughout the country and have not encountered significant difficulties in performing their work. Government officials expressed appreciation for the work of many foreign religious groups in providing much needed assistance in education, rural development, and training. However, government officials also expressed some concern that foreign groups use the guise of religion to become involved in illegal or political affairs.

The 2003 Directive on Controlling External Religions prohibits public proselytizing. However, enforcement is limited to a ban on door-to-door proselytizing during the lunch hours of 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. daily.


Section III. Societal Attitudes

The generally amicable relationship among religions in society contributed to religious freedom.

Minority religions experienced little or no societal discrimination during the period covered by this report; however, adherents of the Muslim and Christian faiths reported minor conflicts. In July 2003, a mob of angry villagers severely damaged a local Christian church in Svey Rieng Province, blaming the construction of the church several years earlier for the area's drought.



http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35394.htm

[damntexdem]

7. That will never happen here!

Instead, detainees here will have to sign an affidavit denying Allah.

Or maybe some will have to sign on denying FDR. ;-)

[bobthedrummer]

10. Children will be sodomized in front of their parents, like at Abu Ghraib

and this will be marketed as kiddie porn, like what really happened at Abu Ghraib as part of The War President's Crusade against evildoers.

[struggle4progress]

8. Here's the AI webpage for recent AI reports on Laos

http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-lao/index

[struggle4progress]

9. Catholics celebrate Easter in a new church in northern Laos (3/31/05)

<snip> Mgr Thopahong, who is an ethnic Hmong, experienced personally the regime’s aversion for Christians. He was jailed from 1977 to 1981, from 1984 to 1986, and for another five months in 1998. Currently, he can do pastoral work, but only with government approval.

“The presence of the Church,” he said, “is spreading slowly because it must work within the limits set by the government’s religious policy. we want to teach people to become religious so they can develop the country in all aspects.”

He is optimistic he might be allowed to build another church in the village of Phonxiang where authorities have already given Catholics permission to meet regularly and pray. <snip>

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=2909

[Spiffarino]

11. Gee...sounds a lot like what's happening in Iraq

Not the government's doing, but persecution nonetheless. And it's persecution that probably never would have happened had we not interfered.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2033

"What are the Muslims doing?" asked Brother Louis, a deacon at Our Lady of Salvation, an Assyrian Catholic church in Baghdad minutes after it had been bombed. "Does this mean that they want us out?"

Well, yes, it does. Our Lady of Salvation was just one of five churches attacked in a series of coordinated explosions in Baghdad and Mosul on Aug. 1, a Sunday, between 6 and 7 p.m. In total, these car bombings killed 11 people and injured 55. In addition, the police defused another two bombs.

The timing of the assault guaranteed a maximum number of casualties. August 1 is a holy day for some Iraqi Christian denominations and because Sunday is an ordinary work day in mostly Muslim Iraq, Sunday services take place in the evening.

The five bombings were by no means the first attacks targeting Iraq's Christian minority since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Others (according to the Barnabas Fund, an organization assisting persecuted Christian minorities), were bunched together at the end of 2003 and included a missile attack on a convent in Mosul; bombs placed, but defused, in two Christian schools in Baghdad and Mosul; a bomb explosion at a Baghdad church on Christmas Eve; and a bomb placed, but defused, at a monastery in Mosul.


Yes I know, this comes from RW wackjob and avowed Muslim-basher Daniel Pipes. Normally I wouldn't cite his drivel, but it's worth noting that any idiot can see what's going on over there. Not that they think their almighty Bush has anything to do with it...:eyes:

[msongs]

12. sounds like a reverse Salvation Army - what goes around comes around....

christians have been doing the same thing to non christians for 2000 years. now listen to them howl and shriek with self righteious indignation.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[Igel]

13. Sounds like civil liberties and human rights are

fully contingent on some sort of communalistic ethic.

You don't bear your own guilt; you bear the guilt of others in the same class or group that people assign you to.

A point of view common in many cultures around the world. But nearly extinct here, I thought.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. If

The Christians in question had been involved in any of these two thousand years of persectution then I'd agree with you, but not caring about someone being oppressed simply because of their religion is unjustifiable.

Responsibility is not collective. If someone who has something in common with me commits a crime, it's not my fault.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. This is from an evangelical website

The prisoners in question are Hmongs, who are a persecuted ethnic minority in Laos.

Buddhist countries (Myanmar, for instance) do not have a history of persecuting Christians just for being Christians, but for political opposition or being an ethnic minority.

I suspect that these Hmong prisoners happened to be Christians but were arrested for asserting their ethnic rights, not for their religion.

I also wonder if these people were converted to Christianity by Hmongs who were converted by evangelical groups in the U.S. and returned to convert people in "the old country." As I recall (Minnesota is one of the main centers of Hmong settlement in the U.S.), the Hmongs have their own tribal religion, neither Christian nor Buddhist.

Given their history of fighting on the side of the U.S. in the Vietnam War, I suppose that the Laotian government could be wary of any Hmong with strong U.S. connections.

There's undoubtedly more to the story than this evangelical website is revealing.

[bobthedrummer]

17. Yea, it's probably being discussed at Col. Loan's liquor store in some

detail right now, as well as in the Vatican, Lydia.

[joefree1]

16. We must invade Laos now!

We must invade Laos now to stop the world wide persecution of Christianity by the evil forces of Relativism!

... oh wait, does Laos have any oil? :sarcasm:


Seating now available in the Smoking Section:
Politics, humor, death and the Devil - http://www.eDiablo.com

[MrPrax]

18. Um...Before Jumping to Conclusions

Did anyone check to see if this 'story' was even true? BosNews?

"Breaking the News for Compassionate Professionals"
BosNewsLife is an Internet news agency covering stories on Christians and Jews living in difficult circumstances for whatever reason, including persecution, as well as other hard hitting news stories from around the world

To my 'unprofessional' nostrils, it 'smells' like a dozen other 'archetype' stories run out of ME, Uganda, East Timor, etc about Xtian persecution...

I am sure that a 'search' of the site won't produce any stories about lawsuits being launched by people kicked out of Denny's because they 'don't serve Bin Ladens!'

[Dcitizen]

19. That's the life in unwelcomed religious land.

Today is 30th anniversary of the end of Indochina war.

In their silent opinion, freedom of Christian expansion was the root cause of Western invasion over Indochina for 100 years, then everybody were casted into the hell of bloodiest war in 20 years.
This war was fully supported from both Catholic military power and Buddhist liberals in this side.