Vietnam Charges Dissident Priest With Sedition

Vietnamese prosecutors have charged a prominent dissident Catholic priest with plotting to undermine the communist government and a court will put him on trial soon, state television reported Sunday night.

The formal charges against Father Nguyen Van Ly, 59, came less than a month after Pope Benedict XVI received Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in a groundbreaking meeting hailed as a possible first step in normalizing relations between the Catholic Church and the communist state.

State-run VTV1 reported in Sunday's nationwide broadcast that Father Ly, who had been detained by police for a week in his diocese in central Vietnam, had been formally charged. All media in Vietnam is state-controlled.

The broadcast showed footage of a police raid last week on the priest's office. Father Ly - who has previously spent a total of 14 years in prison - had been prevented from leaving the church since then, but was reportedly moved Sunday.

State television also named two leaders of an illegal opposition party as Ly's "accomplices" but did not say whether they, too, had been charged with a crime.

Nguyen Phong and Nguyen Binh Thanh, co-founders of the Vietnam Progression Party, were arrested in Hue, central Vietnam, last week during the annual Tet lunar new year holiday.

The next day, police raided Father Ly's diocese office, seizing papers and computers and preventing him from leaving the church.

According to the state television newscast, Father Ly will be tried under Article 88 of Vietnam's penal code, a sedition law that outlaws incitement against the government and "conducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic."

Vietnam's government spokesman had on Friday denied that Father Ly was under arrest, but did say the priest was guilty of "acts of inciting and gathering some elements against the authority."

Father Ly was imprisoned 1983 and 1992. He was rearrested in 2001 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for "undermining national unity," a crime under Article 87 of Vietnam's penal code.

He was released in a general amnesty in 2005, though a government spokesman said Friday that the priest "has shown no repentance since his release, refusing to comply with his probation sentence."

Since his release, Father Ly had resumed work with Vietnam's small and illegal pro-democracy movement.

The new charges against him come at a sensitive time in relations between the Vatican and Hanoi, which were at an all-time high since unified Vietnam broke off diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1975.

The communist regime, which once tightly restricted religious worship, has loosened its grip on the country's six million Catholics as well as Buddhist believers.

However, the government insists on having final say over Church administration and senior leadership appointments and "abusing religious freedom" for anti-government activities is also a crime under Vietnamese law.

US President George W Bush attended an inter-faith service at a Catholic church in Hanoi late last year when he visited for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit.

The US recently removed Vietnam from list of countries considered the worst religious-freedom violators just ahead of the APEC summit.

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Biography of Father Nguyen Van Ly

Born August 31, 1947 in Quang Tri province in central Vietnam, Father Nguyen Van Ly was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in 1974 and served as secretary to the late Archbishop Nguyen Kim Dien.

In September 1977, Father Ly was arrested for distributing two essays by Archbishop Nguyen Kim Dien criticizing the government's religious oppression. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and sent to a prison labour camp near Hue. Several months later, authorities released Father Ly, but prohibited him from engaging in religious activities.

Father Ly continued his religious teachings and in January 1983 was ordered into internal exile by the Vietnamese authorities. He sent a letter in reply which exposed the government's religious oppression, and he pledged to remain at his parish, where his followers gathered around his residence in support. On the morning of May 18, 1983, Vietnamese government security forces forcibly removed Father Ly from his home. He was subsequently sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 4 years probation. Released in July 1992, Father Ly was placed under police surveillance and again banned from conducting religious activities.
On November 24, 1994, he issued a "10-point Statement on the State of the Catholic Church in Hue Diocese" detailing the Vietnamese government's violations of religious freedom. Authorities exiled him to Thuy Bieu village near Hue which had only a small Catholic community.

On November 2000, Father Ly re-stated his 10-point Statement, followed by an appeal titled "We Need True Religious Freedom in Vietnam." In these documents, he described the communist government's long-standing policy of oppression toward religions in general and the Catholic Church in particular as a "noose around the neck of the religions."

On December 4, 2000, in protest of the government's seizure of church property and placement of restrictions on church activities, Father Ly and parishioners in Nguyet Bieu erected a large sign stating "We need freedom of religion" on the church's land, and started to sow seeds. Public Security cadres arrived immediately and began to intimidate these parishioners.

In early 2001, authorities increased the harassment and isolation of Father Nguyen Van Ly. Father Ly, however, continued to speak out. In February, he provided written testimony for a hearing by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He also submitted written remarks for a briefing by the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus on May 16, 2001.

On May 17, 2001, over 600 security police stormed An Truyen Parish to arrest Father Nguyen Van Ly. In a two-hour trial on October 19, 2001, orchestrated by the government and with press coverage forbidden, Father Ly was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 5 years of house arrest.
As a result of international pressure, Father Ly was released from prison in early 2005. Despite a lung condition and his having been placed under house arrest, he immediately took up work for human rights. During interviews with various foreign radio stations he appealed to his compatriots for boycott of Vietnam’s single-party system of government, the origin of the lack of human rights in Vietnam. On August 4, 2006, for the first time, 118 Human Rights activists across Vietnam unanimously spoke up to address the lack of freedom in Vietnam and called for democratization of the country in the “Manifesto on Freedom and Democracy for Vietnam in 2006”. The group is known as “Bloc 8406”; Father Ly is a Founder and an Interim Representative of this group. Manifesto 8406 has received wide-spread support from the international community as well as Vietnamese people within Vietnam, despite the oppression they receive from the government for supporting this declaration. It has turned into a large movement and has led to many more parties, organizations, and associations surfacing to operate publicly in Vietnam. The milestones of this pro-democratic movement will be outlined below:
On April 15th, 2006, the first and only privately-owned printed bi-weekly magazine in Vietnam, “Freedom of Speech”, was published by Father Ly and three other Catholic Priests, and distributed free of charge thoughout Vietnam via an underground delivery network. As of today, nineteen issues have been published.
On June 20th, 2006, Bloc 8406 issued the “Declaration on 10 Fundamental Conditions for a truly free, democratic and multi-party National Assembly Election in 2007,” calling for a large-scale boycott of the Vietnam’s National Assembly Election in 2007, as long as it continues to be orchestrated by the Communist Party of Vietnam.
On August 22nd, 2006, Bloc 8406 proposed the steps and stages that will lead to the democratization of Vietnam, titled “Progress to Democratise Vietnam in four stages and eight steps.”
On Septemter 2nd, 2006, the first issue of an electronic magazine, “Freedom and Democracy,” was published by a group of intellectuals and members of Bloc 8406 in Ha Noi, despite tremendous efforts by the Vietnamese government to stop it.
On September 8th, 2006, the Vietnam Progression Party was founded and started to operate publicly in Vietnam.
On Oct 16th, 2006, the Alliance for Democracy and Human Rights for Vietnam formally announced its formation. Since then, the Alliance has received tremendous support from many pro-democracy organizations inside and outside of Vietnam.
Bloc 8406 has contributed to the formation of the Independent Labor Union of Vietnam on October 20th , 2006; the Committee for Religious Freedom for Vietnam on October 21st, 2006; the United Workers and Farmers Organization of Vietnam on October 30th , 2006; and the Committee for Human Rights for Vietnam on December 10th, 2006, among others.
On November 25th, 2006, Bloc 8406 originated “Democracy Day for Vietnam: designate the 1st and 15th of every month to be the People’s Day of the White Shirt.”
On December 11th, 2006, the Vietnamese Progression Party originated the movement “Wing of the Dove: everyone is a reporter” to counteract the recent Vietnamese government Directive No. 37/2006/CT-TTg denying privatization of the Press in any form.
Bloc 8406 continues to monitor and speak out about the continuing lack of freedom in Vietnam, publishing nine protest letters as of today.

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