On Monday (August 11), Vietnamese police cut electricity and stormed services at the ongoing home, advocacy group Christian Solidarity (CSW) reported.
In Thailand’s Ng Gin province in northern Vietnam, around 20 Catholics were celebrating Mass at the parish officials’ home in Bìnhkhang village in ni commene, the group reported. Officers and local officials then entered the country and requested that the service be suspended.
According to Parish Priest’s Facebook, the executives brought three people to a local police station, a leader in the local Catholic community, a homeowner and a member of a group meeting at home.
It was unclear why local governments disrupted services, but Vietnamese officials can refuse to approve religious activities if participants come from outside their jurisdiction. In the video on the priest’s Facebook account, local officials can be heard asking people questions about where they were from.
“However, other voices identified as local Catholic voices can be heard asserting that they are local residents,” CSW said, adding that officers prevented priests from accessing the parishioners where they were detained and interrogated.
“The official Facebook account of BAC Ninh Parish, which oversees the area where the incident occurred, has earned 60,000 views within two hours and has reposted a video shared by hundreds,” CSW said.
Vietnam was not included in the US State Department’s latest (December 29, 2023) as a country of special concerns (CPS) designation for religious freedom violations, but was included on a special watch list along with Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic and Comoros.
The US government in 2004 designated Vietnam as a CPC to tolerate or engage in religious rights violations, which has been removed since, but a report from last September by the International Committee on Freedom of Religion (UCIRF) found that religious freedom has deteriorated.
Although Vietnam met almost all conditions of the 2005 US agreement, “contradictions in the application of these policies mean that the freedom conditions for religion have deteriorated significantly,” the USCIRF report states. “When Vietnam passed a new law on belief and religion in 2016, stakeholders observed that the law includes a language about the right to religion and freedom of belief, but also cemented the province’s solid grip on defining acceptable practices and suppressing objections.”
In 2022, the State Department first placed Vietnam on its special watch list, and repeatedly designated it in 2023.
Sanctions are one of the actions that the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act calls on the US administration to impose on the CPC, but Vietnam is one of the countries that has been granted presidential immunity from sanctions. The report states that Vietnam’s persecution of religious registration process and persecution of unregistered groups has led to continued violations of religious rights violations.
“Even though Vietnam is a very religiously diverse society, state authorities often oppose registration of minority religious groups.
Groups that endure frequent legal and administrative abuse include Montagnado and Montagnado Protestants, Khao Dai, Hoa Hao and Unified Buddhists, Duong Van Minh, and Falun Gong. The lack of surveillance on local governments created a major imbalance in how Vietnam applied religion and belief laws and regulations to these groups.
“Even among registered groups, state officials have almost complete control over the approval and content of religious activities, gatherings and leadership appointments,” the USCIRF reports. “Dissidents, including religious leaders, face harassment, physical abuse, imprisonment and surveillance. Government interference has expanded to confiscation of property, closure of the religious system and censorship of religious materials.”
Vietnam ranked 44th on the Open Doors’ 2025 World Watchlist (WWL), making it the hardest to become a Christian, rising from the 35th of the previous year.
“Local authorities split church services, detain, threaten, fined them, sometimes imprison church leaders and order them not to talk about Jesus anymore,” the WWL report said. “Christians are targeted by arrests and abductions, and many people are forced to flee the village.”
Converts from ethnic animist religion can destroy their homes and face expulsion from the community, while women and girls may face the threat of divorce if they are trafficked, sexually assaulted, forced marriage, or married, the report says.
According to a report by WWL, Vietnam improved to 9th place on the World Watchlist this year in 2025, due to a decrease in violence and a decrease in Christians detained and sentenced for faith-related reasons and a decrease in Christians.
“Converts from Buddhist or traditional religious backgrounds face the greatest persecution from their own communities and from local governments that already suspect these ethnic minority groups,” he said.
