September 28, 2000, Thursday, BC Cycle
Authorities have blocked leaders of a Buddhist organisation from distributing relief aid to flood victims because the group is banned by the communist government, religious officials and international agencies said Thursday.
Senior monks in the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), a pre-1975 group which has been outlawed by Hanoi since the war, were intercepted by security agents in An Giang province and forced to return to Ho Chi Minh City, 150 kilometres east, the UBCV reported. "I call it discrimination of relief," said Thich Quang Do, deputy head of the UBCV and one of Vietnam's most prominent dissidents. Do said he intends to personally accompany a UBCV relief team to the delta next week and urged the communist leadership through a September 24 letter to allow him free and safe passage.
"I intend to go and give relief to flood victims," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa, by telephone from his tightly monitored monastery in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.
The announcement sets up a possible showdown between Do and the government, which jailed the Nobel Peace Prize nominee half a dozen years ago for similar attempts to conduct UBCV flood relief.
"As for my own safety: whatever happens, I will accept it," Do said. Three UBCV teams were dispatched from the southern metropolis on September 21 to distribute 310 million dong (22,000 dollars) in aid to thousands of victims of the flooding, which has caused at least 136 deaths and seriously affected three million people.
Two teams were able to distribute the bulk of their relief in Dong Thap province and partial relief in Long An, but the team in devastated An Giang was intercepted and its leader, Thich Nguyen Ly, confined to his pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City.
"An Giang police discovered they belonged to our church and they were prevented," Do said.
The monks were ordered to stop distributing the parcels, which contained money, dried noodles and sugar, in part because they bore UBCV labels, according to the International Buddhist Information Bureau, the UBCV's Paris-based information service.
The situation echoes a 1994 incident in which Do and colleague Thich Khong Tanh were arrested and then sentenced to five years in prison for organizing a similar UBCV flood relief mission.
Do, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was released in a 1998 amnesty and chose to remain in Vietnam, where he resides under virtual house arrest in his Thanh Minh Zen Monastery in Saigon.
When asked why the UBCV did not contribute its aid into the state relief operations, Do said it was vital that the church "know whether the relief will reach the victims or not."
Private citizens are allowed to donate relief aid directly, but organisations must register with local authorities and funnel their aid through official channels, authorities said.
"Otherwise they will be denied access to the area for their own safety," said a relief officer in An Giang who asked to remain unidentified.
Communist Party chief Le Kha Phieu toured the worst-hit districts of An Giang Wednesday and said local army units had done a "heroic job" in their rescue missions, state media reported.
Earlier in the week, Phieu called on "the entire population" to donate whatever they could to help flood victims.