Three leading Vietnam monks under house arrest for two years

Agence France Presse

October 16, 2003 Thursday

HEADLINE: Vietnam says three dissident monks under house arrest

DATELINE: HANOI, Oct 16

Vietnam said Thursday it has placed three senior monks from an outlawed
Buddhist church under house arrest for two years for violating national
security legislation.

Amid international condemnation of an escalation in the crackdown on the
Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), foreign ministry spokesman Le
Dung, however, stressed their detention was not a case of "religious
repression".

"We would like to emphasize that the consistent policy of the Vietnamese
state is always to respect the freedom of religion of its citizens," he
said in a statement. "There is absolutely no 'religious repression' in
Vietnam but only the settlement of law violations."

The house arrest orders against Thich Tue Sy, vice president of the
UBCV's Institute for the Dissemination of the Faith, Thich Nguyen Ly, its
treasurer, and Thich Thanh Huyen, head of the church's youth department,
were authorised Saturday by Le Thanh Hai, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City
People's Committee.

Dung said they were accused of "attempting to violate Article 27 of the
Ordinance on Handling Administrative Violations".

Vietnamese law allows heads of provincial governments to place
individuals under house arrest from six to 24 months without trial for
harming national security.

The three monks were accompanying UBCV patriarch Thich Huyen Quang and
his deputy Thich Quang Do from the Nguyen Thieu Monastery in the central
province of Binh Dinh to Ho Chi Minh City on October 8 when their vehicle
was blocked by police.

After a 10-hour stand-off outside the monastery they were allowed to
proceed, but they were stopped again by police in Khanh Hoa province the
following morning and taken in for questioning.

Quang, who has been under effective house arrest without charge or trial
for more than two decades, was taken back to Binh Dinh. Do, a 2003 Nobel
Peace Prize nominee who was released from two years of house arrest in
late June, was taken to the Thanh Minh Zen Monastery in Ho Chi Minh City.

Both have been put under unofficial house arrest and their monasteries
placed under round-the-clock surveillance, according to the UBCV's
Paris-based information arm, the International Buddhist Information Bureau
(IBIB).

The foreign ministry spokesman, however, did not respond to written
questions on their fate.

ben/pch