Vietnam sentences Protestant pastor for undermining 'national unity'
A court in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province handed a Montagnard Protestant pastor a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence, ruling that he undermined “the national unity policy.”
The court also imposed four years of supervised probation on the pastor, Y Nuen Ayun, 59, to begin once he's released from prison, the U.K.-based religious freedom group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) said in a statement.
The trial lasted about two hours, and Y Nuen Ayun's wife and children attended, according to the Irish advocacy group Church In Chains. His defense lawyer argued that prosecutors failed to establish any specific acts constituting a crime under Vietnamese law, and his church has said the sentence is intended to intimidate members into abandoning their faith.
State media reports that the indictment alleges Y Nuen Ayun led unregistered Protestant activities since 2003, later becoming linked to a man identified as A Ga, who lives in the United States and whom authorities accuse of backing separatist activity through Protestant congregations in the region.
Prosecutors said that starting in 2019, Y Nuen Ayun helped found and lead a group called the Church of Christ Central Highlands and stayed in touch with A Ga about religious matters. They alleged he organized gatherings, met with followers in person and online, recruited new members, sent reports to overseas rights groups and collected more than 7.7 million dong, worth about $294, to fund the group.
Authorities said the goal was a separate religious body for the region’s ethnic minorities.
State media said local officials had already met with and warned Y Nuen Ayun about his activities. Prosecutors said he violated Article 116 of the Vietnamese Criminal Code, the provision covering “undermining the national unity policy.”
CSW President Mervyn Thomas said Vietnam continued to flout international human rights law in its campaign against religious freedom, mocking the country's seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
"Religious minorities, especially Christians in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, are mischaracterized as wanting to foster anti-Vietnamese and separatist sentiment, when in reality they are simply seeking the right to practice their religion of choice in peace," Thomas said. "This is exactly what has happened to Pastor Y Nuen Ayun, and we therefore call for his immediate and unconditional release."
Most of Vietnam’s Montagnard people are Protestant Christians who live in the Central Highlands, a region with a long history of friction with the government. CSW said the community has faced intense harassment and intimidation since a June 2023 attack on provincial Communist Party offices in Dak Lak that left nine dead, including local party officials and police.
The alleged activity involved two movements. One was the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO), an armed group founded in the 1960s that sought autonomy for ethnic minority peoples, chief among them the Montagnard community, though its campaign ended decades ago. The other is what the government calls De Ga Protestantism, or Tin Lanh De Ga, its term for a movement it accuses of mixing Protestant worship with FULRO's political goals.
Hanoi does not recognize the group as legitimate and considers it a danger to national unity. Rights groups, for their part, often regard the label as a slur meant to strip legitimacy from minority worship.
The global persecution monitoring group Open Doors said in a January report that pressure on Christians in Vietnam had increased slightly over the past year, with local authorities targeting ethnic minorities and non-traditional Protestants in the Central Highlands, while the government stays silent on local persecution and controls churches through its Committee on Religious Affairs.
Vietnamese authorities reported that 119 Christians in Gia Lai province, in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, faced “enforcement action” in the first half of 2026 over alleged ties to groups that press for self-determination for religious and ethnic minorities, according to CSW.
