Monday, February 5 12:57 PM SGT
HANOI, Feb 5 (AFP) - Vietnamese police arrested one of the country's leading religious dissidents just a week before Washington was due to hold hearings into violations of religious freedoms here, the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam said Monday.
Thich Quang Do, who was a nominee for last year's Nobel Peace Prize, was detained in the central province of Quang Ngai on Sunday, the church's Paris office-in-exile said.
He had been paying a traditional lunar New Year's visit to the banned church's aging leader, Thich Huyen Quang, who lives under effective house arrest in a remote pagoda in the village of Nghia Hanh, a written statement from the church said.
"Police confiscated a videotape and photographs taken of the two monks and said they were seaching for documents that threatened national security'."
They also surrounded all of the outlawed church's pagodas in Quang Ngai and the neighbouring provinces of Phu Yen and Ninh Dinh, it said.
It was only the second time that the church's top two leaders had met since Do was freed under a 1998 amnesty.
Their first meeting in March 1999 was broken up by police who detained both monks for extensive questioning before escorting Do back to his pagoda in the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City.
The church's exiled spokesman, Vo Van Ai, condemned the latest arrest and expressed concern for the aging monk's health and safety.
"It is an age-old Vietnamese tradition to visit one's elders and pay them respects during the lunar New Year. It cannot be perceived as a 'threat to national security'," Ai said.
"Under the provisions of the 1998 government amnesty, Thich Quang Do is a free man entitled to enjoy citizenship rights.
"Today's arrest is not only a grave violation of his fundamental rights to freedom of movement, religion and expression but is also inconsistent with Vietnamese tradition and culture."
Do spent a total of 18 years in prison or under house arrest on charges of "abusing democratic rights and freedoms to harm the state."
He has remained the target of repeated attention from police ever since his 1998 release.
Last autumn he was among a string of UBCV leaders detained while attempting to deliver relief supplies to the southern Mekong Delta after the region's worst floods in nearly 40 years.
The authorities here have repeatedly clamped down on relief missions by the outlawed church saying that only state-authorised organizations are allowed to engage in charitable activities.
Do's latest arrest comes as the US Commission on International Religious Freedoms prepares to hold hearings in Washington next week into violations of religious freedoms here.
Ai is among the witnesses due to be called at the February 13 hearings.
Washington has repeatedly called for the lifting of the restrictions in force against the UBCV since the communist authorities made the the state-sponsored Buddhist Church of Vietnam the only authorised Buddhist church in 1981.
"In their representations to the government, the ambassador and other embassy officers urged recognition of a broad spectrum of religious groups in accordance with international standards of religious fredoms, including members of the UBCV," said a State Department report published last September.
"UBCV leaders continue to be harrassed and their rights severely restricted by the government."
In December 1999, a US embassy official became the first westerner to visit the UBCV leader in 18 years.