Y-Wo Nie and Y-Nuel Nie were arrested at dawn over a religious class

Officers came at six in the morning on 13 September 2021. The two men were taken over classes on religion and basic human rights, and over their membership of the International Dega Church.

What happened

On 13 September 2021, at six in the morning, police officers from Dak Lak province, from Cu Kuin district and from the local area arrested Y-Wo Nie and Y-Nuel Nie. Both men were taken to a police station in Cu Kuin.

They were arrested, the police said, for taking religious classes that dealt with basic human rights, and for being members of the International Dega Church.

Cu Kuin district sentenced Y-Wo Nie to between six and twelve months. His wife and family were not permitted to visit him.

This was not his first arrest

Y-Wo Nie was arrested once before, in 2004. He and several others had been demonstrating in Dak Lak, asking for the freedom to worship and for their land to be returned to them. He was held in Ha Nam from 2004 until his release in 2013.

We must recognise human rights and religious freedoms, and extend these rights to all people to practise freely on their own.

Those words were said publicly while Y-Wo Nie was serving a sentence for attending a class about them.

What we are reporting, and what we are not

The arrests, the stated grounds and the sentence are as the men’s families reported them to us. Our community also holds a wider belief about what is done to Montagnards in custody, including the use of poison; we record that here as what our people say and fear, not as something we have established in this case. Nothing of that kind has been shown to have happened to either man.

Why it matters

A man who spent nine years in prison for asking to worship freely was arrested again, seventeen years later, for sitting in a class on the same subject. The charge tells you what is actually forbidden, and it is not disorder.