HANOI, Nov 7 (Reuters) - A monk from a Buddhist sect in southern Vietnam has climbed up a tree and threatened to kill himself in a protest for religious freedom, an overseas support group said on Wednesday.
The Santa Ana California-based Central Council of Administrators of the Hoa Hao Buddhist Church said Vo Thanh Liem began a hunger strike on the tree in front of his temple on Tuesday and had both gasoline and a knife.
It said he intended to kill himself unless the police stopped harassing him.
The e-mailed statement said Liem's temple at Quang Minh Tu in the province of An Giang was surrounded by communist officials and police.
Police at An Giang provincial police heaquarters said they were checking the report, while a local official in Liem's district said authorities there had no idea what he was doing as he had locked himself in his compound.
The overseas group said Liem had written to the authorities in April last year to protest against repression of the Hoa Hao church and expressed his intention to burn himself to death.
It said Liem had been jailed more than 10 times for his religious protests, once for several years after the authorities persuaded him to come down from a tree where he was meditating.
In March, a member of an outlawed branch of the Hoa Hao sect burned himself to death in a protest and that same month police in Ho Chi Minh City said they had foiled a mass immolation planned by the group in a park.
Several Buddhist monks burned themselves to death in famous public protests in the early 1960s to protest against religious repression by the then government of South Vietnam.
The communist government in Hanoi, which took over South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 insists it respects religious rights but does not tolerate groups operating outside six authorised churches.