HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Authorities in central Vietnam on Tuesday confirmed they have found the badly burned body of an unidentified man in a park where a Buddhist group said a member immolated himself to protest religious repression in the Communist country.
No one has claimed the body, which was found Sunday morning in a park in central Danang City, a local government official said. It was buried Monday, he said.
The official said authorities did not know how the man died.
On Monday, a Paris-based Buddhist support group said Ho Tan Anh, a leader of the Buddhist Youth Movement in central Vietnam, had immolated himself in the park early Sunday, Vietnam's national day.
In letters written before his death, Anh, a 61-year-old farmer, urged the international community to pressure Vietnam to respect religious freedom and free all people detained because of religious beliefs, the International Buddhist Information Bureau said.
Anh wrote that 13 other leaders of the movement had pledged to immolate themselves to appeal for religious freedom, it said. It was unclear whether any other immolations had taken place, the group said.
Vietnam says its citizens enjoy religious freedom and insists it holds no prisoners of conscience.
The Buddhist Youth Movement was founded in the late 1930s by the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, one of a number of independent religious groups now banned by Vietnam's Communist government, which allows only seven recognized religious organizations.
The youth movement claims a membership of 300,000, the International Buddhist Information Bureau said.
Members have resisted government attempts to take control of the movement by making it part of the state-sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Church, it said.
Vietnam's Communist Party forbids any independent organizations that might challenge its political and social control.
In letters addressed to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, European Union Human Rights Commission and the heads of various governments, Anh said Vietnam's government had stepped up repression of the Unified Buddhist Church in recent months, the information bureau said.
In June, security agents encircled several of the church's temples and placed Thich Quang Do, a prominent priest, under house arrest after he announced plans to escort church patriarch Thich Huyen Quang to Ho Chi Minh City for medical treatment.
Quang, 83, who suffers from high blood pressure, arthritis and stomach ulcers, has been under house arrest since 1992.
AP-NY-09-04-01 0646EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.