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BANGKOK: A Vietnamese pastor and human rights activist was arrested on anti-state charges on Wednesday, state media reported.
Y Nuen Ayun is a leader in the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ, an unregistered independent Protestant church based in the hill tribes of the country’s Central Highlands.
The US State Department says the church and its members have faced “severe harassment” from Vietnamese authorities for engaging in allegedly anti-government activities.
Having been arrested and interrogated in the past, Y Nuen Ayun was designated as “at risk” by Project 88, a Vietnamese rights group that tracks political persecution.
State media outlet VNExpress said Wednesday that police arrested Y Nuen Ayun for “repeatedly providing fabricated information about religious activities in the Central Highlands, slandering the government and causing difficulties for the people.”
A US State Department report on religious freedom in Vietnam from 2019 said that he and other religious leaders have been publicly denounced by Vietnamese police and told they must leave their Christian churches if they wanted to remain in their communities.
The Montagnards are an ethnic minority belonging to various hill tribes from Vietnam’s Central Highlands who have long been at odds with the country’s communist government.
Montagnards sided with the US-backed South during Vietnam’s decades-long war, and some want more autonomy while others abroad advocate independence for the region.
VNExpress said another man, Huynh Ngoc Tuan, was arrested on Tuesday for “making, storing, disseminating, propagating information, documents, and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” on his Facebook page.
A court sentenced him to 10 years in prison in 1992 for anti-government activities.
Human Rights Watch said in April that Vietnam was expanding its crackdown on dissent, targeting even ordinary social media users for posts criticizing the state.
State media outlet Vietnam News Agency reported Thursday that five exiled members of outlawed political party Government of Free Vietnam were prosecuted in absentia for “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government.”

NEW DELHI: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday leading the UK’s largest-ever trade mission to India.

Starmer is accompanied by a 125-member delegation including business executives and representatives of universities and cultural institutions.

The trip, which follows the signing of a multibillion-dollar free trade agreement in July, is the British premier’s first official visit to India since taking office last year.

“This is the biggest trade mission that the United Kingdom has ever sent into India,” he told a business gathering upon arrival in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai.

“That FTA is really important for us. It’s the biggest deal that we’ve struck since we left the EU.”

The deal was signed during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to London in late July and is yet to be ratified by both governments in a process that usually takes about 12 months.

“I’ve asked the team to implement it as quickly as humanly possible, so that it’s in place,” Starmer said. “I think the opportunities are already opening up, the contact has already increased, trade with India went up hugely.”

As he is scheduled to meet Modi on Thursday, it is expected that both may push for the ratification to be expedited in the face of India’s dealing with 50 percent US tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration, and the UK’s foreign and trade policies affected by Brexit — the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, which took effect in 2021. 

“I think this is important for both in India and the UK, and not only in the context of operationalizing the FTA and to keep the momentum going in the relationship, but also because this is a moment where the American policies have created an incentive to deepen the economic engagement,” Harsh V. Pant, vice president at Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation, told Arab News.

“In that context, we can see an early coming into effect on the FTA and those issues that need to be resolved, perhaps will be resolved much faster than previously anticipated.”

Under the new pact, about 99 percent of Indian goods will get duty-free access to the UK market.

It will also halve import duties on UK-produced whiskey and gin from 150 percent, followed by a further decrease to 40 percent in a decade. Tariffs on automobiles will be reduced from 100 percent to 10 percent.

The FTA has been widely estimated to increase bilateral trade by 60 percent. Currently, it stands at about $54 billion, according to UK Department for Business and Trade data, with UK exports to India estimated at $21.7 billion and imports at $32.4 billion.