Vietnam tries to portray cult gathering as Christian

Vietnam Tries to Portray Cult Gathering as Christian [Excerpts]

The government tried to portray several thousand Hmong followers of a sub-Christian messianic cult as orthodox Christians while the military forcibly disbanded their gathering yesterday and today.

The cult members recruited from orthodox Christian groups – vulnerable to false teaching in a country where Christians cannot print their own Bibles and are subject to other restrictions – had gathered for religious reasons in Muong Nhe district, Dien Bien Province, but it turned into a confrontation before local defense forces disbanded them, bolstered by Vietnam People’s Army reinforcements hastily dropped in by helicopters.

Sources in Muong Nhe told Compass today that several thousand Hmong who had initially gathered to wait for the ushering in of a new Hmong kingdom had been sent or taken back to their home areas, but that some 3,000 remained. A source said that about 50 Hmong followers, including the purported “messiah” and another top leader, fled into the forest but were captured by the military. The two leaders were said to have been severely beaten by the military.

Some missionaries who work with the large, two-decades-old Hmong Christian movement, said to number more than 350,000, have reported aggressive cult activity since March. Severe restrictions on religious freedom in the Northwest Mountainous region where most of the Hmong live have made it difficult to train church leaders and provide adequate biblical teaching for these recent followers of Christ. As a result, church leaders said, lack of foundational biblical knowledge clearly makes them gullible to false teaching.

http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/vietnam/article_112169.html/