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

[Year 1997]
[Year 1998]
[Year 1999]
[Year 2000]
[Year 2001]

Vietnam arrests religious dissident day after Clinton visit

HANOI - Vietnam detained a religious dissident in Ho Chi Minh City less than 24 hours after US President Bill Clinton ended his historic visit in which he stressed the importance of religious freedoms, police revealed Thursday. Le Van Tri, 44, was arrested in the southern city's Binh Tri Dong district Monday as he was riding his motorcycle, a district police officer told AFP.

Some 87 kilogrammes (190 pounds) of documents relating to a Hong Kong-based Buddhist sect, which is outlawed here, were confiscated, the officer said. Police believe Tri was delivering the documents to a printers where followers were putting together a book for use in the sect's prostelytising work in the city, he said, adding police hoped to make further arrests.

In recent months, the Vietnamese authorities have launched a major clampdown on the sect, known as the Thanh Hai Vo Thuong Su in Vietnamese, accusing its members of dissident activity. Earlier this month 10 followers were detained in a raid on a private home in the central province of Phu Yen in which police seized around 200 kilogrammes (480 pounds) of documents. The defendants are all now under house arrest awaiting trial on charges which carry stiff prison terms after police said several of the documents confiscated contained anti-government propaganda. Another seven sect members were detained in the same province on October 7 and are also under house arrest awaiting trial. It was not immediately known what the sect's name was in Cantonese.

Throughout his historic three-day visit -- the first by a US president to communist Vietnam -- Clinton raised US concerns about religious freedoms here detailed in a September report to Congress by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "In our experience, guaranteeing the right to religious worship and the right to political dissent does not threaten the stability of a society. Instead it builds people's confidence in the fairness of our institutions," the president said in a televised address to the Vietnamese people in Hanoi Friday.

And on Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City, Clinton briefly met the city's Roman Catholic archbishop, Pham Minh Man, to discuss the problems facing the church in a country in which religion remains the subject of official suspicion. Since 1981 the Vietnamese authorities have recognized just one mainstream Buddhist church -- the state-sponsored Buddhist Church of Vietnam.

Agence France Presse - November 23, 2000.