Vietnam dissident monk released after questioning
HANOI - Prominent Vietnam dissident monk
Thich Quang Do said on Thursday he had been detained and
questioned for allegedly trying to establish an illegal Buddhist
organisation.
Do told Reuters he was questioned by security officials in central
Quang Ngai province for six hours on Tuesday after meeting with
the patriarch of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church in Vietnam
(UBCV). Do is secretary general of the UBCV.
Earlier on Thursday the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human
Rights said Do, who was released in a mass prison amnesty last
year, had been arrested after meeting UBCV patriarch Thich Huyen
Quang.
Do, believed to be about 70, denied he was trying to set up another
Buddhist group and said security officials ordered him to return to
southern Ho Chi Minh City, saying he was to ill to travel to other
parts of the country.
``I was accused of trying to set up a new Buddhist organisation and
they said this was illegal,'' Do, a long-time critic of the ruling
Communist Party, said by telephone from Ho Chi Minh City.
Officials were not immediately available to comment.
Prior to his release around September last year Do had been serving
a five-year sentence for offences connected with attempts to send
relief supplies to flood victims in 1994.
Vietnam has already come under fire over the March 4 arrest of
dissident Nguyen Thanh Giang, whom sources said had been found
in possession of documents considered anti-communist.
The UBCV was the Buddhist Church organisation in the former
South Vietnam. Hanoi says the state-sanctioned Vietnam Buddhist
Church of Vietnam, established in 1981, is only legal Buddhist
authority in the country.
Vietnam said last week that every country had the right to deal in its
own way with dissenters considered a threat to national stability.
Hanoi also denies any people have been jailed for their political or
religious beliefs.
Reuters - March 25, 1999.
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