3/12/2001 09:00:00 GMT
HANOI, March 12 (AFP) - Rights watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres called on Vietnam's communist authorities to free a prominent dissident placed under renewed house arrest last month in a statement received here Monday.
The watchdog's general secretary, Robert Menard, wrote to Public Security Minister Le Minh Huong on Friday to demand an end to the restrictions against 61-year-old biologist Ha Si Phu, the statement said.
Phu, who was only released from an earlier house arrest order in January in the face of international pressure, had known "only five weeks of freedom" in the past four years, the watchdog said.
"The harassment of Vietnamese journalists and dissidents is in contradiction with the international commitments made by the country, especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Vietnam in September 1982."
Police in the southern highland resort town of Dalat placed Phu and former municipal council deputy chairman Mai Thai Linh under house arrest on February 8 for "making contact with reactionaries living abroad to sabotage Vietnam," the official media here reported.
Phu forms part of a circle of dissident intellectuals in the town who have been jailed or placed under house arrest for criticising the government in recent years.
He spent four months in prison in 1996 after being arrested for "revealing state secrets."
AFP 120900 GMT Mar 01