Rights group says detained Vietnamese monk needs urgent surgery
HANOI - An overseas Vietnamese human rights group appealed Tuesday for the
elderly head of a banned Buddhist church to be released from house
arrest for surgery on a feared cancerous growth.
In a letter sent to Vietnam's top leaders, Vo Van Ai, president of the
Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, said Thich Huyen Quang,
head of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), needed urgent
treatment.
"I urge you to formally release the Most Venerable Thich Huyen Quang
and allow him to travel to Ho Chi Minh City," Ai said. "It is not only
the Patriarch's existence that is at stake, but also the life and
death of our nation's very essence, that of independent Buddhism in
Vietnam."
Quang, 85, has been kept under effective house arrest near the Quang
Phuoc Pagoda in the remote central province of Quang Ngai since 1982.
Hanoi banned the UBCV in 1981 after it refused to come under the
control of the state-sanctioned Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
Doctors at Quang Ngai hospital examined Quang last week and said the
growth near his eye could be cancerous. Due to their inadequate
facilities, they recommended that he undergo urgent surgery in Ho Chi
Minh City, Ai said.
However, on Wednesday last week Quang Ngai police denied permission
for the monk, who is also suffering from high blood pressure, chronic
athritis and stomach ulcers, to travel to the southern business
capital, he added.
Vietnamese government officials could not be immediately contacted for
comment.
The church's number two leader, Thich Quang Do, was placed under house
arrest for two years in June 2001 for launching an "Appeal for
Democracy in Vietnam" and planning to lead a UBCV delegation to escort
Quang to Ho Chi Minh City for medical treatment.
Last week, Chris Patten, the European Union's External Relations
Commissioner, urged the communist regime to release the two monks.
Do, 74, had previously spent 18 years in prison and under house arrest
on charges of "abusing democratic rights and freedoms to harm the
state".
Human rights groups have long charged Vietnam with smothering all
dissent and routinely jailing democracy activists, critics of the
regime and church leaders who do not recognise the state's authority
Agence France Presse - February 18, 2003
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