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

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[Year 1999]
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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.