The Watchman

His Church Received 293 Dollars. The Court in Dak Lak Gave Him Seven and a Half Years.

The state counted the money to the last dong. It came to about 293 dollars, and it bought a pastor seven and a half years.

Y Nuen Ayun is fifty nine years old. He lives in Ea Phe commune, in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak. Police took him on October 8, 2025.

On August 5 the People's Court of Dak Lak sentenced him to seven years and six months in prison. The charge was undermining the national unity policy, Article 116 of the penal code. He is Ede. He is Montagnard. He pastored a church the state does not recognize.

Vietnam published its own account of the trial through the state news agency, and the account is more useful than any denunciation. Buried in it is the whole financial case against him. Over roughly six years, the indictment says, he received 7.7 million dong from a pastor living overseas. About 293 US dollars.

Two hundred and ninety three dollars. Six days passed before anyone outside Vietnam reported the sentence at all.

Two of the Three Came Home. It Took Thirteen Days for Anyone to Find Out.

Two of the three church leaders taken from Heiban were released on July 28 and August 1. The news took thirteen days to leave the Nuba Mountains, and it reached us after we published.

He Said Mass That Morning Standing In for Someone Else. He Was Found on Church Road.

Father Samuel Oyetoro filled in for a colleague on leave, said Mass, and was found on Church Road with machete wounds. Four days later gunmen took three people from a Sunday Mass in another state.

Engraving of a small hillside church in the Nuba Mountains, its door standing open, empty stools outside, smoke on the far ridge.

Three Church Leaders Are Gone From One Town in Sudan. Nobody Has Asked for Money.

Heiban lost three church leaders in nine days. In three months of abductions, no one has demanded a ransom for any of them. That absence is the story.

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