~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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US religious affairs ambassador in Vietnam amid crackdown

HANOI : A senior US State Department official has begun a fact-finding mission to Vietnam to assess the state of religious freedom in the communist nation amid an escalating crackdown on religious dissidents.

The week-long visit by John Hanford, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, began Saturday and comes as Washington faces pressure at home to get tough with Hanoi over human rights. The US embassy said last week the aim of Hanford's visit was to learn more about the "status of religious communities and activities" and to continue talks with the government.

It said he would visit Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the Central Highlands, the scene of demonstrations in February 2001 by ethnic minorities protesting against a crackdown on their Protestant faith and land confiscation. Hanford's visit coincides with growing government efforts to curtail the activities of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), which was outlawed in 1981 because it refused to come under Communist Party control.

On Thursday the foreign ministry admitted that it had placed three senior UBCV monks under house arrest for two years for violating the country's strict national security legislation. UBCV patriarch Thich Huyen Quang and his deputy Thich Quang Do have also 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 has refused to confirm their status, but it has accused Quang, 86, and Do, 75 -- Vietnam's most prominent religious dissidents -- of being in possession of state secrets and trying to reorganize the church with the help of outside forces.

Last month the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a congressionally mandated rights watchdog, called on Secretary of State Colin Powell to nominate Vietnam as a "country of particular concern" on freedom of worship -- a move that could lead to sanctions. The commission's appeal followed the imprisonment of two nephews and a niece of a jailed Catholic priest for passing on information about their uncle and the religious situation in Vietnam to US-based activists.

Washington rebuked Hanoi following their September 10 trial, condemning the "harsh sentences" as a violation of international human rights standards.

Agence France Presse - October 19, 2003.