Vietnam's most famous Buddhist dissident, recently released from house arrest, has protested to the government over the alleged kidnapping from Cambodia and subsequent detention of a fellow monk, an overseas church group said.
Thich Quang Do, deputy head of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), sent a letter on Tuesday from Ho Chi Minh City to the communist nation's top leadership calling for the "urgent release" of monk Thich Tri Luc.
In a statement, the church's Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau (IBIB) cited Do in his letter as saying that Luc had been persecuted for over a decade because of his active membership of the UBCV.
Luc, whose secular name is Pham Van Tuong, was kidnapped and forcibly repatriated to Vietnam in July last year after he sought asylum in Cambodia, according to the IBIB.
He had fled Vietnam on April 19, 2002 and was granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) in Phnom Penh on June 28 the same year.
The monk was under UN protection when, one month later on the night of July 25, unidentified individuals came to the guest house where he was staying in the Cambodian capital and took him away in a car, the IBIB said.
The Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities had both denied any knowledge of his whereabouts and the UNHCR was unable to obtain any information on his case.
Luc was not heard of again for more than one year until his family late last month received a summons from the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court ordering them to attend his trial on August 1.
The charges against him were not specified, but the trial was subsequently postponed.
"Clearly, it is pretty concerning that the rumours about his kidnapping last year now appear to be true," said one Western diplomat.
The Vietnamese foreign ministry has refused to comment on the case.
"Thich Tri Luc has committed no crime," Do said in his letter. "All he wanted was to peacefully practice his religion and realise Buddha's teachings of compassion by helping people in need."
Do called on the government to explain Luc's 12-month secret detention, the charges against him, and why his whereabouts has been hidden from the UBCV and his family "in flagrant violation of domestic and international law".
His demands are likely to infuriate the regime, which released the 75-year-old church elder in late June after more than two years of house arrest in an apparent bid to appease its international human rights critics.
Luc was first arrested in October 1992, jailed without trial, released and placed under indefinite house arrest.
Nearly two years later, in 1994, he joined a rescue mission organized by Do to collect and distribute aid to victims of devastating flooding in the southern Mekong Delta region.
Security police, however, intercepted the convoy and arrested its organizers. In August the following year Luc was sentenced to 30 months in prison and five years "probationary detention". Do was given a five-year jail term.
Released in February 1997, Luc was again placed under house arrest.
Wary of the UBCV's popular support in a country where at least 70 percent of the population are Buddhists, the Communist Party banned it in 1981 and created the Vietnamese Buddhist Church in its place.