HANOI - Vietnam said on Sunday it had slapped travel restrictions on the leader of a Buddhist sect who reported being detained and beaten last week after organising a protest at which supporters planned to burn themselves to death.
The Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's Army) newspaper said Le Quang Liem, chairman of a dissident branch of the Hoa Hao sect, had been put under "administrative surveillance" for two years for using religious freedom to propagandise against the state.
The order, which bars Liem from travelling outside a set area without permission, was effective from March 17.
"He has many times gathered and agitated bad elements in the Hoa Hao to oppose Party and state policies on religion," the paper quoted Ho Chi Minh City police Captain Nguyen Van Muoi as saying.
He said that, in the latest case, Liem had organised a demonstration, mostly of women, in the city's Le Van Tam park on March 17 when participants had planned to set themselves on fire.
It quoted police as saying the protesters had banners and gasoline and seven packs of gasoline-soaked cotton.
Last week, the U.S.-based Overseas Hoa Hao Buddhist Association said the 75-year-old director of the Hoa Hao Buddhist Women's League, Nguyen Thi Thu, had doused herself with petrol and burned herself to death in a village in southern Vietnam on March 19 in a protest to demand religious freedom.
Officials in a village in Vinh Long province said they had found the charred body of a woman by a roadside, but rejected the suicide report and said it looked more like a murder case.
Liem reported being detained by police in Le Van Tam park early on March 17 and being held in custody for 30 hours before being allowed to return to his home under police guard.
COUNCIL FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
He told a source who spoke to him by telephone he was beaten by police in detention and that his house was guarded by about 20 officers. The source said Liem had said he had refused to sign a document agreeing to spend two years under house arrest.
Last month, Liem and three other dissident religious leaders formed the Vietnam Interfaith Council to promote religious freedom.
One, Catholic priest Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, was put under restriction earlier this month after urging the U.S. Congress not to ratify a historic trade pact with Vietnam because of rights abuses.
Vietnam's communist government is under heightened scrutiny in the United States because of the pact and U.S. officials have warned ratification could be complicated by rights issues.
The newspaper said Liem was being treated leniently because of of his age. "The local authorities only took him for an assessment session before the people, creating conditions for him to realise his wrongdoings so he will end his violations of the law and actions opposing the people's aspirations and true Hoa Hao followers," it added.
The Hoa Hao are a neo-Buddhist sect combining Buddhism, animism, Confucianism and indigenous practices. They claim about four million adherents in Vietnam and have long complained of persecution stemming from their armed opposition to communism during the Vietnam war.
Hanoi recognises a mainstream Hoa Hao church organisation but radicals from the sect, who have made suicide attempts and threatened immolations in the past, are not tolerated.
Several Buddhist monks burned themselves to death in famous protests in the early 1960s against religious repression by the then government of South Vietnam. Pictures of one such immolation created some of the most enduring images of the Vietnam War.
00:18 03-25-01
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