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Jailed for holding a Christian funeral in communist Laos

Laos church

Four Christian men in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic have been languishing in jail for months because they wanted to hold a Christian funeral, which officials said would have violated local customs and traditions, according to foreign Christian groups.

Half of the communist nation’s Christians are Catholics and many belong to ethnic minorities who were converted to Christianity by European and American missionaries before the ruling communist Pathet Lao (Lao Nation) guerrilla movement seized power in 1975 after the Vietnam War.

Christianity has been widely portrayed by local officials and media alike as an alien religion in landlocked Laos, whose population is predominantly Buddhist and animist.

The four Christians were detained in early July in Khammouane province after they had traveled to a village to participate in the last rites for a deceased fellow believer.

Provincial officials deemed the Christian ceremony to be against local customs and arrested the four visitors on sight, an official told.

“When someone dies, we help by making donations, sharing food and asking [Buddhist] monks to come and pray at the home,” the official was quoted as saying.

“But [the Christians] wanted to do things that violate our traditional customs. They were preparing things that we felt were strange and wrong and do not understand, and so we acted in order to prevent that from happening.”

The four Christian men have not been formally charged with any crime, yet remain incarcerated pending the authorities’ decision on how to proceed.

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