Mr. Speaker:
This morning, Vietnamese communist authorities arrested a highly respected Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly, a former Amnesty International "prisoner of conscience," accusing him of fomenting unrest against the government. Father Ly was detained in his parish of Phu An, near Hue, under a criminal law for failing to obey surveillance rules and agitating followers to cause public disorder.
``He was arrested for spreading propaganda against the government,'' said a spokesman for the secret police of Phu An commune. The propaganda charges Ly faces carry penalties of 10 to 12 years in prison. A longtime critic of the government, Ly has previously spent nearly 10 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Ly led a religious service of about 150 people in which police said he distributed leaflets. The government said the leaflets were anti-communist. Ly, 54, had previously been under heavy police surveillance and in March was denounced by official media as a ``traitor'' for urging the United States to link religious freedom to ratification of a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam.
``(Ly) continued to carry out behavior that affected public security and obstructed production and normal life of the people,'' the spokesman said.
Faher Ly's arrest came amid growing criticism of Hanoi for persecution of religious groups -- Christians, Buddhists and, Cao Dai. Ly's detention coincided with a report that a dissident Buddhist leader, Thich Quang Do, was summoned for questioning in Ho Chi Minh City.
The Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau said that 73-year-old Thich Quang Do received a summons demanding he appear before a Communist kangaroo court tomorrow to explain ``a number of wrongful acts" he have recently committed.'' The move could be related to Do's recent letter to the Vietnamese leadership in which he called for the release another dissident monk, the group said.
Do is the second-highest monk in the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. The movement's patriarch, Thich Huyen Quang, 83, has been imprisoned for 19 years.
Mr. Speaker:
The Hanoi regime insists it grants full religious freedom to its citizens. This is a blatant lie. Given the simultaneous mass persecution of our former allies, the Montagnard tribes people in Vietnam's Central Highlands, this body should link an end to religious and ethnic persecution to the ratification of the bilateral trade agreement between the United States and Vietnam. I also call on the United States embassy in Hanoi to aggressively make every possible effort to demand the release of Father Ly and an end to religious persecution and rampant human rights abuses in Vietnam.