Brussels, 31 March 2003. Only a few days after Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) was visited by diplomats from European Member States, the Commission and the U.S.A. during his convalescence in Hanoi, his situation has taken a sudden turn for the worse. According to the International Buddhist Information Bureau (IBIB), the Hanoi authorities have reacted adversely to the Patriarch's 6-point statement calling for his immediate release and that of his Deputy Thich Quang Do; the re-establishment of the UBCV's legitimate status; the assurance of the UBCV's complete independence of all political control ; the guarantee of the UBCV's right to freely organize autonomous humanitarian operations.
Three UBCV dignitaries who accompanied the Patriarch to Hanoi were forced to leave under threat of imminent arrest, and the Patriarch himself is unable to leave the capital. In a phone conversation with IBIB Director Vo Van Ai, the Patriarch said the authorities were pressing him to go to the Nguyen Thieu Monastery (Binh Dinh Province) instead of returning to Quang Ngai, where he has been detained for the past 21 years. In fact, this is part of a long-running government campaign to transfer the Patriarch to this remote province and place him under house arrest, whilst claiming that he has been released. The Patriarch said he clearly informed the authorities that he would only move from Quang Ngai when he has received official release papers. He will then return to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), where he was arrested in 1982.
Question to the Commission by Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and Member of the European Parliament:
Is the Commission - whose recent initiative we warmly welcome - aware of these recent developments concerning the UBCV Patriarch ? What initiatives does the Commission intend to take regarding this new campaign of harassment against the Patriarch? More generally, does not the Commission feel, given the Hanoi authorities' total obduracy towards freedom of religion and _expression, that it should call upon EU Member States to issue an extremely serious warning on this matter to the Vietnamese authorities ?