Every Sunday, Paul Rmah Bral and a partner, along with other friendly men in pairs, travel around on motorbikes in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region introducing villagers to Catholic values.

Bral is a 60-year-old ethnic Jarai, part of a wider group known as Montagnards, who speak a Malayo-Polynesian language related to other tongues in the Asia-Pacific region spoken from Indonesia to far-away Fiji.

A French Catholic missionary made contact in the mid-1800s with the traditionally animist Jarai.

During the Vietnam War, many Jarai joined with clandes- tine American forces and later resettled in the United States.

Bral and other lay missionaries, known as giao phu, have for the past two decades been bringing more villagers into their fold in Kontum Diocese.

“It is the happiest thing in life to know that God creates and loves us, and to bring His love to our brothers and sisters,” said

Bral, a former Vietnamese language teacher who embraced Catholicism in 1995 and was baptized in 2000.

He and dozens of other villagers, including his wife and son, attended weekend catechism classes held at the Redemptoristrun Evangelization Centre.

Local communist authorities in the Central Highlands, which borders with Cambodia, pressured locals into withdrawing from their study sessions.

In recent months there has been a crackdown on religious practices by an ethnic militia force in a remote region on Myanmar’s mountainous border with China.

Churches in northern Shan State have been closed, crosses torn down and pastors and other Christian leaders detained by the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

On October 9 about 100 Christians were released, but as many as 92 remained in custody, Christian leaders said.

The UWSA, the military wing of the United Wa State Party (UWSP), dominates the population of about 500,000 in the self- proclaimed Wa Self-Administered Division of Myanmar.

According to various researchers, the UWSA is the largest standing militia in the country with a force of up to 30,000 troops. The enclave has long been widely seen to be backed by China as it is the implementation of the now intensified crackdown on religious practice.

The militia and its political arm are remnants of the Burmese Communist Party and retain very close links with authorities in China. China is conducting a fresh campaign of internal repression of religion, but its motives in northern Myanmar are essentially economic.