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

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Vietnam dissidents reported held, arrests denied

HANOI - Vietnam has detained two prominent elderly dissidents on the eve of key U.S. Congress votes after one of them applied to set up an independent anti-corruption body, the BBC's Vietnamese language service reported. But Vietnam's Foreign Ministry rejected the report that Hoang Minh Chinh and Pham Que Duong had been arrested, although it gave no indication of their status or whereabouts.

The BBC, quoting relatives and friends, said Chinh and Duong had been arrested at their Hanoi homes on Wednesday. Two other men, Nguyen Vu Binh and Tran Van Khue, were also taken away by police for questioning, it said. A diplomat in Hanoi earlier quoted an informed Vietnamese source as saying dozens of dissidents had been called in for questioning on Wednesday but only two -- Chinh and Duong -- were still being held. The Foreign Ministry's Press Department said it ``totally rejected'' the BBC report of Duong and Chinh's arrest. ``It is not true that they have been arrested,'' the department said in a statement.

The BBC report said two days before the detentions, Duong and Tran Van Khue had submitted to the Vietnamese leadership an application to set up ``The Association of Vietnamese People Supporting the Party and the State to Fight Against Corruption.'' ``This (Wednesday) morning...Pham Que Duong's daughter called me and said, crying, that police are searching his house and had arrested him,'' the radio quoted fellow dissident Nguyen Thanh Giang as saying. ``Three minutes later, she called me again saying six policemen were also searching Mr. Hoang Minh Chinh's home and had arrested him.'' The reports come at a highly sensitive time for Hanoi. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on Thursday on a key bilateral trade agreement signed with America's former enemy Vietnam last year as well as on an act calling for its communist government to respect human rights.

Hanoi sees interference

On Thursday, the official Vietnam News Agency quoted an August 31 letter from the Vietnam branch of the Vietnam-U.S. Association as saying the introduction of the human rights resolution in the U.S. house was interference in Hanoi's affairs. It urged ``suitable moves to prevent the discussion and approval'' of the resolution, saying it would be an ``obstacle to the process of reconciliation and development of friendly ties between the people of Vietnam and the United States.'' Vietnam's Communist Party, which does not tolerate rivals to its monopoly of power, has identified the fight against corruption as a high priority, but its efforts to root out what has become a widespread problem have had only limited success.

Duong, 68, is the former editor in chief of a military history magazine who quit the party in 1999 in protest against the arrest of another dissident, Lieutenant-General Tran Do, 77, who has recently spent a lengthy time in hospital. Chinh, who is in his early 80s, is the former head of a Marxist-Leninist research institute who has been jailed several times for criticizing party policy. Earlier this week, an overseas support group said a 61-year-old Buddhist activist, Ho Tan Anh, burned himself to death in the central city Danang on Sunday -- Vietnam's Independence Day -- in a protest to demand religious freedoms. The government, which routinely denies restricting rights, has yet to confirm the incident, although it has reported the discovery of an unidentified burned body.

Reuters - September 6, 2001.