Le Thi Hong Lien from Bien Hoa Mental Hospital after what her family and church sources described as a period of "severe torture and abuse," reports said late Friday April 29. The unexpected freedom of the 21-year Mennonite Christian came two days before her scheduled release as part of a special amnesty program and a delegation of 15 people picked her up from Center II in Ho Chi Minh City, Thursday, April 28, said Compass Direct, a Christian news agency.

“Ms. Lien exhibited joy in being greeted by her family and by the Vietnam Mennonite Church committee,” a press release issued by the church reportedly said. Both Lien and her father refused to sign an amnesty paper indicating "release before end of sentence" because it included a clause stating that the punishment was just, Compass Direct said.

The Vietnamese authorities sentenced her to one year in prison on charges of "obstructing an officer to perform his duty." However human rights watchdog Amnesty International considered Lien a "prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of her fundamental rights to freedom of expression and association," BosNewsLife monitored.

UPHILL BATTLE

The Mennonite World Conference (MWC), a global community of Christian churches who trace their beginning to the 16th-century Radical Reformation in Europe, told in a statement to BosNewsLife News Center that Lien will face an uphill battle to full recovery, even after her release. She is reportedly weak and mentally deranged following alleged abuse in prison.

Recently "when her father, mother and brother visited her for 20 minutes" in a mental hospital, "she exhibited the same poor health. As they prayed with her, she did not even look at any of them," explained the MWC. Visitors have also been quoted as saying that Lien’s body "showed signs of severe abuse." She has apparently difficulty using her jaw, which was allegedly broken by beatings and left untreated.

Lien was in March transported to the Mental Hospital of Bien Hoa, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north-east of Ho Chi Minh City after "a concerted international appeal to Vietnamese authorities to provide Ms. Lien with the care and treatment she needs," the MWC said.

FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS

“The Vietnam Mennonite Church believes the release of Ms. Lien before the end of her sentence came because of the considerable attention paid to her case by many foreign governments, human rights organizations, international media and Christian believers, both Mennonite and many others around the world,” Compass Direct quoted the denomination as saying.

The Vietnamese government did apparently not release two other detained Mennonite leaders, the Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang and Evangelist Pham Ngoc Thach, whose three- and two-year sentences on similar "resisting" charges were upheld on appeal on April 12. It was unclear if they would be part of an amnesty given to 7,751 inmates Saturday, April 30, when Vietnam commemorates the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

The victory over American forces and their allies in 1975 is considered by the Communist regime as Liberation Day. Lien’s expected release is reportedly two months short of completing her one-year prison sentence on charges of "resisting an officer performing official duty."
 
GOVERNMENT URGED

"Our Vietnam Mennonite Church calls on Vietnam government officials to free the two … workers of the Vietnam Mennonite Church remaining in prison since 2004, the Rev. Nguyen Quang and Evangelist Pham Ngoc Thach, and to respect our freedom of religion," the church reportedly said.

Quang and Thach are part of the group that came to be known as the ‘Mennonite Six’. The six were arrested between March and June 2004 in connection with a confrontation involving agents of the secret police conducting a surveillance stakeout at the headquarters of the Mennonite church in Ho Chi Minh City.

Under pressure from the international community, several prominent Christian and other religious leaders as well as political dissidents have been released in recent months, but many Christians are still detained across the Communist nation, human rights groups say. (With BosNewsLife Research, Stefan J. Bos, Compass Direct and reports from Vietnam)

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