Hmong people
The Hmong people (RPA: Hmoob, Nyiakeng Puachue: 𞄀𞄩𞄰, Pahawh Hmong: 𖬌𖬣𖬵, IPA: [m̥ɔ̃́]) are an indigenous group in East Asia and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwest China (Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangxi) and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a large diasporic community in the United States of more than 300,000. The Hmong diaspora has smaller communities in Australia and South America (specifically Argentina and French Guiana, the latter being an overseas region of France).
Religious persecution[edit]
Hmong Catholics, Protestants and animists have been subjected to military attacks, police arrest, imprisonment, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and torture in Laos and Vietnam on anti-religious grounds.[107]
A significant example was the deportation of Zoua Yang and her 27 children from Thailand on 19 December 2005, after the group was arrested attending a church in Ban Kho Noi, Phetchabun Province, Thailand. Ms. Yang and her children were detained upon their return to Laos, after which the whereabouts of much of the family is unknown.[108]
In 2011, Vietnam People's Army troops were used to crush a peaceful demonstration by Hmong Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical Christians who gathered in Dien Bien Province and the Dien Bien Phu area of northwestern Vietnam, according to Philip Smith of the Center for Public Policy Analysis, independent journalists and others.[109] In 2013, Vam Ngaij Vaj, a Christian pastor of Hmong ancestry, was beaten to death by Vietnamese police and security forces.[110] In Hanoi, Vietnamese government officials refused to allow medical treatment for a Hmong Christian leader, Duong Van Minh, who was suffering from a serious kidney illness, in February 2014.[111]
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has documented official and ongoing religious persecution, religious-freedom violations against the Laotian and Hmong people in both Laos and Vietnam by the governments. In April 2011, the Center for Public Policy Analysis also researched and documented cases of Hmong Christians being attacked and summarily executed, including four Lao Hmong Christians.[112]