In North Vietnam, Bishop Chuong on his way to visit some Hmong communities

The Hmong daily radio broadcast in Radio Veritas Asia started in December 1994. Most of the Hmong people in Southeast Asia (7 million) live in communist countries, namely Laos, Vietnam and Southern provinces of China and 99% of them are Shamanist.

In their remote villages, the Hmong Catholic people are harshly persecuted. In North Vietnam, some have been obliged to do away with their Christian commitment and go back to their animist cult. The ministry of the priests and Catechists is greatly hampered over there.

Through some letters and e-mails, we get an idea of their reactions and hopes. For an instance, they ask us to come up with longer programs, at the time they are back from their fields. They give gratitude to us for the news program we air up. We air news in six minutes every day and special news program each Wednesday.

Recently, we started some new programs, Imaginary conversations or Dramas. These programs are relevant to their daily setbacks or aspirations and touch their lives closely. Some topics are education of the girls, drug addiction, new sources of revenues and other valuable topics..

We also plan to bring about special program about the way we, as Christians, respect their attachment to the various, lengthy and expensive Shamanist rituals. By keeping in mind that they are not "tabula rasa", we will not fly too high, or far away from where they are. This special program is quite difficult but by going in that direction, we are sure that there will be more and more listeners to our programs that have the name "THE GOOD SHEPHERD". After a while, we'll know if this new trend is fruitful. We also hope that through this new program, our Christian faith can indeed be enriched and purified. This new commitment cannot be called pre-evangelization, because any way of respectfully approaching them is by itself a sign that we value that hidden presence of God in their beliefs and strong convictions.

In the Hmong Target Center in Lomsak, there are four Hmong who are also working for the preparation of our various programs. Needless to say, it will be up to them (along with some Catholics around) to write down the texts about that topic.

So far, we exclusively use White Hmong whereas Hmong people in North Vietnam (they number up to 800,000 people) and South China speak Green Hmong. Beside the late afternoon program in White Hmong, we hope that, this coming year 2008 or in 2009, we will be able to air up in the morning time our various programs in Green Hmong.