Hanoi (Deutsche Presse-Agentur May 8) - Vietnamese security police have stepped up harassment of some of the country's most prominent dissidents, one of who suffered head injuries in a staged traffic accident which could easily have been fatal, according to an overseas pro-democracy group and local sources.

Perhaps the most serious incident took place in southern Ho Chi Minh City, in connection with the funeral this past Sunday of Nguyen Van Tran, one of the ruling Communist Party's sharpest critics.

Tran, 84, a former high-ranking party member, who became disenchanted with the party and spent the last years of his life revealing its secret history, died on May 1.

Two elderly friends of Tran were attacked while on the way to his funeral, which had a heavy police presence taking photographs, said an attendee.

Nguyen Ngoc Lan, 68, a dissident writer, suffered a cracked shoulder blade and a head injury after he was thrown from his motorbike in what appears to have been a deliberate attack.

Father Chan Tin, a Catholic priest, a passenger on Lan's motorbike, also suffered minor injuries after being thrown from the bike when the attackers kicked the front wheel, he said in an interview Friday.

The attack took place last Sunday at six in the morning as the two were leaving the Church of Our Saviour, where Father Tin lives, to attend the funeral.

"Maybe they didn't want us to go to the funeral... I have my suspicion about who they were, but I don't want to say," said Tin.

Tin said he was later informed that the attackers followed them as they left the church. "I saw three or four policemen nearby where we were attacked but they did nothing," Tin said, adding that Lan seemed to be recovering.

This account essentially confirms a report from the Free Vietnam Alliance, an overseas pro-democracy group, seen here Friday.

The report said security forces had also stepped up their harassment of Ha Si Phu, Tieu Dao Bao Cu and Bui Minh Quoc, all intellectuals who live under a kind of house arrest in the mountain retreat town of Dalat.

Quoc's house was ransacked, all reading materials carted away and he was subjected to several day-long interrogation sessions by police there, apparently in retaliation for the publication of a new collection of poems, the statement said.

In another incident, Nguyen Thanh Giang, a dissident from Hanoi, was detained for four days and threatened with illegally distributing Quoc's "Poetic Flashes in the Interrogation Chamber."

Giang was only released after he went on a hunger strike, the statement added.

It was impossible to independently confirm all the details but overseas pro-democracy groups typically have extensive in-country contacts, and are usually well-informed.

The statement, issued from the group's headquarters in Paris, also said that authorities had "indefinitely" cut off family visits for other prominent dissidents, many serving long terms in prison or remote labour camps.

Professor Doan Viet Hoat, an American-trained educator, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, was recently refused a visit by a brother but it remains unclear if there is a new ban on visits.

Hanoi's foreign ministry issued a statement last week that said Hoat's brother, who now lives overseas, was refused for not following arcane procedures.

Convicted in 1990 of trying to overthrow the government by publishing a pro-democracy newsletter, Hoat recently refused release if he agreed to leave the country, according to reliable diplomatic sources.

Like many of the Vietnam's prominent dissidents, Tran was formerly a member of the Communist Party but fell out of favour as he grew more disillusioned with the post-war authoritarianism of the regime.

In 1995 he published "Writing to Mothers and the National Asssembly" which laid out a secret history of the Communist Party, including the disastrous land reforms of the 1950s, a series of brutal internal purges and a crackdown on disaffected revolutionaries from the South.

"It is impossible to list all the crimes this regime has committed in the last 40 years," he wrote in his book which was quickly suppressed.

Just before completing a 500-page treatise defending Phan Thanh Giang, an imperial envoy who in official history is vilified as a national traitor, police seized the draft from Tran's house, with all supporting materials, according to a family friend.

For all acerbic criticism of the ruling Communists, Tran never resigned from the party, said the friend, who preferred to remain anonymous.

He said Tran was buried in the section of a city cemetery set aside for ordinary people, not the area reserved for high-ranking cadres.

"It was as if they had symbolically finally kicked him out of the party and all of his friends were sad about this," said the friend.

"All these incidents. ...(are) clearly state-sponsored terrorism, carried out by Hanoi authorities to prolong its totalitarian rule over Vietnam," said the Alliance statement.