Three ethnic minority Christians have been executed...

Three ethnic minority Christians have been executed by Vietnamese authorities as part of a recent crackdown on "illegal" Christian churches, according to the Montagnard Foundation, a human rights watch group based in South Carolina.
The three Montagnard believers -- Y-Suon Mlo, from Buon Kuang village, Y-Het Nie Kdam, from Buon Ea Tieo village, and Y-Wan Ayun, from Buon Gram village in Vietnam's Central Highlands -- reportedly were injected Oct. 29 with an unknown drug and died in convulsions after being convicted of participation in anti-government activities in February 2001.
Those "anti-government" activities included a peaceful protest by hundreds of Montagnards in favor of religious liberty and against government corruption in key Central Highlands cities. Following the protests, Vietnamese authorities began a systematic campaign to force Christians out of unregistered churches, which they believed had been infected by American Protestant thought that, as one source put it, "opposes the programs of the country."
By September, 354 of 412 churches in Dak Lak province alone had been forcibly disbanded. More than 50 pastors and elders were said to have "disappeared." Dak Lak province is adjacent the Cambodian border.
According to the Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., the Vietnamese government is still following its "Official Plan 184," a secret plan established between 2000-2001 to "eradicate Christianity among tribal minorities." The center learned of the plan through state documents smuggled out of the Southeast Asian nation.
A report released last April by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights lobby, cited multiple instances of torture, mutilation and intimidation on the part of Vietnamese authorities.