Soldiers have secured Ban Sai Jarern and nearby communities and prohibit people from entering or leaving, sources said. As a result of the restrictions, they said, the Ban Sai Jarern church has not been able to meet for worship.

With the area swarming with soldiers and police, many area men fled on July 4 out of fear of further reprisals or imprisonment, sources said. Those who escaped to the mountains have sent word that there is no food; they have resorted to eating banana leaves to survive.

Lao and Vietnamese officials have imprisoned an estimated 52 families from five villages: Ban Sai Jarern, Huay Klay, Fay, Numsamork and Chai Pathana. That is nearly all of the known Hmong families from Vietnam in the greater area, including 30 Hmong families in Ban Sai Jarern. 

Hostile to Christians

Members of the Ban Sai Jarern church, which also serves worshippers from Fay and five other villages, said the congregation has never in anyway cooperated with Vang Pao or anyone seeking a separate state.

“We are law-abiding citizens,” one church member said, “and we want to present our case through legal means, not through armed struggle.”

Vietnamese and Lao communist authorities have long been hostile to the Hmong since previous generations aided U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. Associating Christianity with the United States, authorities assume all Hmong Christians support Vang Pao, who fought alongside U.S. soldiers.

“Christianity is not an American religion, it is a universal religion,” said one source. “We are not a political group seeking independence from the present Lao government – on the contrary, we are actively engaged in building a better nation by faithfully adhering to the teachings of the Bible.”

In June, U.S. authorities arrested Vang Pao and nine associates in California over an alleged plot to topple the communist regime in Laos.

Fast-growing churches in Bokeo province, Christian sources said, have drawn the ire of both Lao and Vietnamese governments for providing aid to Christian Hmong refugees from Vietnam and others fleeing persecution in other parts of Laos. Until this past year, they said, the 4,000 Hmong Christians in Bokeo had not faced persecution.

The crackdown in Ban Sai Jarern stems from an August 2006 capture in Vietnam of two Hmong women who had returned from the village to visit parents-in-law and other relatives, sources said. Vietnamese officials sent them to prison but were unable to force them to divulge the locations of other Vietnamese who had fled to Ban Sai Jarern and other villages in Laos.

On October 5, Lao and Vietnamese officers went into Sai Jarern village, seized five leaders of churches in Vietnam who had fled to Laos and sent them back to Vietnam. One of the church leaders, Saoma Lao, is reportedly dead, but area Christians have not confirmed that information. He was chairman of the Christian Church in Geahkoh village in Vietnam before fleeing to Laos.

Christians sources have confirmed that another one of the five Hmong Christian leaders, Jongneng Yang, is alive. But his condition and whereabouts, like that of the other leaders, are unknown. The others missing are Jue Lao, Thayeng Lei and Lei Yang, a church youth leader.