BY MARK MCDONALD
Mercury News Vietnam Bureau
HO CHI MINH CITY -- The little monk with the shaved head and the gap-toothed grin spends most days inside his pagoda now, intent on finishing up his life's work: a handwritten dictionary of Buddhism. Outside, across the street, the not-so-secret police stand a 24-hour watch.
``They're always out there, writing down the license numbers of the people who come to visit me,'' the Ven. Thich Quang Do says in a hilarious, high-pitched giggle. ``I invite them to come inside and worship Lord Buddha.''
Do happily calls himself an outlaw, an ex-convict, a non-person, a dedicated opponent of Vietnam's communist government, credentials that some believe are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. The 72-year-old Do (pronounced ``dough'') has been put forward as a possible nominee for this year's prize, an effort backed by 29 members of the U.S. Congress and some 200 legislators and academics from around the world.
The Nobel campaign was led in the United States by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, whose Southern California district is home to the nation's largest community of Vietnamese-Americans. The nominating letter, also signed by fellow Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose, compares Do to the Dalai Lama of Tibet.
``The Ven. Thich Quang Do stood above the forces of hatred and authoritarianism gripping his country,'' Sanchez says, ``and advocated instead for compassion and tolerance.''
``I have no idea about winning, but I deem it a great honor (to be nominated),'' Do says. ``It shows that the world has not forgotten about Vietnam.''
Do serves as secretary-general of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, or UBCV, which effectively has been banned by the government, and heads the church's Institute for the Propagation of the Dharma.
``Myself, I have no passport, no papers, no identity,'' he says, laughing. ``I'm a non-person, completely outside society. I don't belong to Vietnam. In prison, at least, I had a convict number.''
Human rights report
Some of Do's recent activities were cited in a new U.S. report on human rights, a report that says Vietnam's rights record ``remained poor'' in 1999.
Do says he has diabetes, high blood pressure and an unsteady heart, and he rarely ventures out of the pagoda on Tran Huy Lieu Street. He gets a monthly health checkup, but the street, he says, is not safe for him.
``I am afraid the authorities might arrange a traffic accident for me,'' he says with a smile.
So he's pretty much limited these days to shuffling between his two rooms, a bedroom and a study, as he works on the final revisions to his massive dictionary. The seven-volume work will be published in Taiwan, he says, and the first volume is already at the printer.
He can barely contain himself when asked if he could publish his book in Vietnam.
``Oh, no! Never! Ha ha! Oh, they'd never allow that! Hah!''
Do becomes much more serious, however, when talking about the government's restrictions on his church. He says the UBCV is prevented from training new leaders because authorities will grant only temporary residence permits to young Buddhist clerics wishing to move to the former Saigon.
``So there are just two of us here (at the pagoda), two old men, the abbot and myself. We're both 72, and when we die there will be no successor,'' he says.
Over the years, most of Do's friends in the Buddhist clergy have agreed to join the official, government-sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Church.
``They cooperate for many reasons, but mostly out of fear,'' he says sadly. ``Our church does not own one inch of earth, and in this pagoda I am just a lodger, just a guest.''
Thich Quang Do's original name was Dang Phuc Tue, and he was born in 1928 in the northern province of Thai Binh. He joined the Buddhist church when he was 13, then left Thai Binh for Saigon when he was 21. He spent the next several years in India, studying principally at the National University in West Bengal.
He returned to Vietnam in 1958, after the French had been defeated and the seeds of the ``American War'' were being sown. He and other Buddhist monks and nuns took part in numerous protests, first against the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in South Vietnam and later against the United States and its growing involvement in the war.
He was friends with many of the Buddhist monks who burned themselves alive in the streets of Saigon, but Do says there was no organized campaign of self-immolation to protest the war.
``They decided on these actions by themselves, very secretly. They never told us. If they had, we would have tried to stop them. We would have said, `Find other means.'
``But they sacrificed themselves for noble aims, and that's acceptable to us as Buddhists.''
Saigon fell to the communists in 1975, and Do was arrested two years later for denouncing the new government's restrictions on religion and its confiscation of church property. He was released in 1979.
The communist government established the state-sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Church in 1981, a kind of forced merger of the country's various Buddhist groups. When Do and others resisted the move, he and patriarch Thich Huyen Quang were rounded up and sent into what they call ``internal exile.''
Confined for years
For the next 10 years, until 1992, Do lived in this odd limbo, unable to publish his writings, worship freely or travel abroad. He was confined to his home district of Vu Doai in Thai Binh province.
He has been arrested or detained several more times in the past few years, and he was slapped with a five-year prison term in 1995 for ``sabotaging government activities.'' Do was released in a widespread amnesty Aug. 30, 1998, and soon afterward was paid a visit by a United Nations ``special rapporteur for religious intolerance.'' But when the investigator arrived at Do's pagoda, he was prevented from entering.
Senior Western diplomats say privately that Do's amnesty, along with the release of other activists, was contingent upon their leaving Vietnam.
``Others were compelled to go,'' Do says, ``but I refused.''
He has been denied permission to publish a Buddhist newsletter, and he recently sent an open letter to top government and Communist Party leaders requesting the release of all political prisoners, the abolition of the death penalty and a reduction of taxes on peasants and farmers.
``The peasants live in chronic poverty, but the government invests only in the cities,'' Do says. ``The leaders are not much interested in the countryside.''
Even after a quarter-century of detention and harassment, Do still is given to fits of infectious, head-back giggling, especially when he gets to talking about the security police and their threats to return him to prison for his ``subversive activities.''
``My hands are empty and my brain is muddy,'' he says, smiling, with his palms up. ``The communists have nothing to be afraid of from me. Look, they have everything -- prison, army, police. I have nothing for them to fear.''