Laos - Authorities arrest Christians, close churches

Authorities in communist Laos have arrested eight Christians and are forcing churches across the country to close, a British human rights group said Saturday.

The Jubilee Campaign said in a statement received here that seven church leaders and one church member were arrested on May 31 in Songkhone district of central Savannakhet province because they refused to sign affidavits renouncing their religious beliefs.

The statement said the eight men were charged with anti-government activities and involvement with foreign political movements trying to weaken the government.

Three of the detainees were now too weak to walk because of poor prison conditions, it said.

Residents of the Lao capital Vientiane, contacted by telephone from Bangkok and speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that a group of local church leaders had been arrested in Songkhone district, where a decades-old church was recently shut down.

Calls to the press department of Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vientiane on Saturday went unanswered.

The Southeast Asian country is predominantly Buddhist, with only a small proportion of Christians. Although it is a one-party state, Laos's constitution provides for freedom of worship.

But in recent years there have been reports of localized persecution of Christians by officials apparently wary that church gatherings could be a focus of anti-government dissent. The secretive regime tolerates no political opposition.

''The communist government in Laos is intent on wiping out the church there,'' said Wilfred Wong, a researcher for the Jubilee Campaign, aChristian group based in Guildford, England that lobbies for the rights of children and against religious persecution.

According to a U.S. State Department human rights report on Laos, more than 95 Christians were arrested and held in custody last year, some for months. In isolated cases, prisoners were detained in prison with crude, one-leg wood stocks or hand manacles, it said.

Residents in Vientiane said that this year, some churches had been shut down in Savannakhet, Luang Prabang and Vientiane provinces and worshippers forced by local officials to renounce their religious beliefs. It was not clear if the officials were acting on orders from central government, they said.

Some of the country's longest-established churches are in Savannakhet province, where the first Christian missionaries came to Laos from Switzerland in 1902.