Vietnam lashed out Friday at a European Parliament resolution condemning a crackdown on dissident religious groups in the communist nation, saying it was "deeply regrettable".
Foreign ministry spokesman Le Dung said the European Union assembly resolution was based on "fabricated, slanderous and distorted information".
"This act is absolutely not in line with the well-developed friendship and cooperative relations between Vietnam and the EU," he said in a statement ahead of Wednesday's annual, closed-door EU-Vietnam talks on human rights.
Hanoi is extremely sensitive to criticism of its human rights record, which it regards as "interference in its internal affairs".
The European Parliament resolution, which was passed unanimously Thursday, strongly condemned a "new and more serious wave of repression" of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) and ethnic minority Christians.
It was the second time in six months the parliament has singled out Vietnam over human rights concerns.
This latest resolution came a day after the US House of Representatives called for greater religious freedom in Vietnam and offered encouragement to the dissident Buddhist church. That too prompted an angry response from Hanoi.
The MEPs demanded EU member states raise the case of detained UBCV followers with the Vietnamese authorities, "and to co-ordinate their efforts to promote this (religious) freedom in a concrete manner".
They also called for the European Parliament to appoint a delegation to visit Vietnam to review religious freedoms and to meet UBCV leaders, including its 86-year-old patriarch Thich Huyen Quang.
Over the past couple of months Vietnam has intensified a crackdown on the UBCV, placing Quang and his deputy Thich Quang Do, 75, under unofficial house arrest in a bid to split the church and isolate them from their followers.
The government has accused Quang and Do -- Vietnam's most prominent religious dissidents -- of being in possession of state secrets and trying to reorganize the church with the help of outside forces.
Authorities also placed four other senior monks under house arrest last month for two years. The UBCV was banned in 1981 because it refused to come under the control of the Communist Party.
Quang has been under effective house arrest without charge or trial for more than two decades. Do, a 2003 Nobel Peace Prize nominee was released from two years of house arrest in late June.
Dung, however, denied there was religious repression in Vietnam.
"This so-called 'wave of repression' of religious groups in Vietnam absolutely does not exist," he said.
"In Vietnam, nobody is arrested or detained for religious reasons, only law violators are punished in accordance with the law."
Last month the US State Department's ambassador at large for religious freedom John Hanford expressed concern at the situation in Vietnam after a fact-finding visit to the communist nation.