Vietnam Police Detain Prominent Catholic Priest And Key Activists

[PhilipShore]

BosNewsLife, Hungary
19 February 2007

http://www.bosnewslife.com/news/2804-news-alert-vietnam-police-detain-prominent

HANOI, VIETNAM (BosNewsLife)-- Vietnamese security forces have detained an influential elderly Catholic priest and other key religious and political activists as part of a major crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in the Communist-run nation, dissidents told BosNewsLife Monday, February 19.

In a letter to the United States Embassy in Hanoi seen by BosNewsLife, representatives of the IMDHR said they also discovered that Vietnamese authorities "dispatched hundreds of uniformed and undercover police to surround and set up checkpoints at the Priests Community Home at Archdiocese of Hue in City of Hue."

Police checkpoints were also seen near the residence "of prominent religious dissident Father Phan Van Loi," the group added. There were also reports Monday, February 19 of attacks against predominantly Christian Degar Montagnards in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

Representatives told BosNewsLife that security forces attacked a Degar Montagnard woman because her sister escaped to Combodia while her husband is a political prisoner. "January 22...four security police arrived in a jeep at the village of Buon Le Da in Dak Lak province they went to the house of H’Hlung Nie, 33," said the advocacy group Montagnard Foundation Incorporated (MFI).

[happyslug]

1. Some more on Chan Tin

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/Tuong_Chan_Tin_bio.html

No comments about him during the Diem period (Diem was a Catholic), but protests during the post-Tet period of the War.