Fbe Laity Protests

    

Self-Immolation by Fire

Protests ensued. On May 9, 2011, 1an attempt of self-immolation by fire occurred at Nga Nam cross-road, Hue. A man, soaked with gasoline attempted to set fire to himself. The security police came in time. The man was taken away to unknown whereabouts. The local authorities nevertheless failed to prevent the Buddhist laity from sacrificing themselves for faith.  Ho Tan Anh was one among them. He was best known as an ardent Buddhist believer. An official of the Movement of Buddhist Youth, he was devoted to his faith with firm determination. An ardent fighter for religious freedom, he voluntarily made himself a torch in protest against the nefarious religious politicy of the government.  The event aroused deep emotion  among the Buddhist circles. Sources reported that, on September 2, 2001, at 4:30 A.M., at the daybreak of the national Buddhist festival of Vu Lan, a leader of the Movement of Buddhist Youth. Ho Tan Anh,  immolated himself by fire. The incident took place in a park of Da Nang, a large city in Central Vietnam. It was an  act of protest against repression of the Communist Party. It was also an appeal to the totalitarian regime in Vietnam, demanding for the respect of the State for human rights, democracy, and freedom. In the letter dated the day of his death and addressed to his Vietnamese compatriots, Ho Tan Anh declared that his sacrifice was especially destined to denounce the religious persecution the Communist Party carried out against the Unified Buddhist Church during the two first weeks of June 2001 (EDA 333).

   

The brother of Ho Tan Anh, who learned the incident when he was listening to the news on a foreign radio station, came to the place, identified the burnt body of his brother, and brought it to the hospital of Thanh Khe. However, when he requested that the dead body of the victim be transported to his house for  funeral services, the police complicated the situation on the pretext that the papers he presented to them were invakid. The same day, the security furtively buried the burnt body at Go Ca  in the district of Hoa Cam in the western outskirts of Da Nang City. In an official declaration, the government simply acknowledged that it had discovered a burnt body.

      

Sources also reported that Ho Tan Anh, born on December 1, 1940, was a poor peasant mading a living on the rice-field. However a single, he raised 5 children confided in him by the parents who were poorer than he. Before he decided hissacrife for his Church, Ho Tan Anh had made kown his thoughts

 to fellow Buddhist his self immolation. On the day of his self-immolation, he said to his near relatives that he was going to pray at a pagoda. In the letter addressed to the International Buddhist Bureau of Information in Paris, Ho Tan Anh informed that thirteen other Buddhists of the Movement of Young Buddhists to which he belonged were ready to follow him in the struggle for religious freedom. The martyr also sent letters to diverse Buddhist dignitaries of the country and personalities of the international community. In the letter to the highest Buddhist leaders, the Most Venerable Thich Huyen Quang and the Most Venerable Thich Quang Do, Ho Tan Anh, after having excused himself for his deed, explained the reasons for which he decided to make himself a torch for religious freedom. It was the systematic repression of the Communist government had carried out against the Unified Buddhist Church since the change of regime in 1975 that made him decide to sacrifice himself..

After the self-immolation by fire of Ho Tan Anh, the police launched a  police operation throughout the region of Da Nang where leaders of the Movement of Buddhist Youth was in action. The operation had its objective to find out the identity of the 13 leaders who, followed the the example of Ho Tan Anh, vowed to follow his example. One of them was Vo Tan Sau, who was the arrested on September 5, 2001, in Saigon, where he was under medical treatment. Vo was brought back to Quang Nam.  He was incarcerated in an unknown place while his family members were assigned to residence surveillance or summoned to police headquarters for interrogation. Many Buddhist leaders of the province of Quang Nam were also convoked to “sessions of work. In Quang Nam, the local police arrested and detained a female Buddhist of Duy Xuyen District. The arrests of prominent Buddhists aroused resentment among the leadership and laity in the provinces in the Center. On May 3, 2002,  Nguyen Ly, a leader of the Buddhist Family, decided to immolated himself by fire for religious cause. The incident took place at Cau Moi Bridge, Hue. Nguyen was a native of Phu Bai Commune, La Vang Precinct, Hue City. He soaked himself with gasoline and set fire to his body while raising a cardboard with words of protest against the Communist’s acts of religious persecution. The security police rushed to the place and brought the body to Hue Hospital.

Protest resumed. On May 9, 2011, 1an attempt of self-immolation by fire occurred at Nga Nam cross-road, Hue. A man, soaked with gasoline attempted to set fire to himself. The security police came in time. The man was taken away to unknown whereabouts.

The leadership

    Tight Control

On June 3, 2001, the Most Venerable Thhich Quang Do was placed under house arrest as he resolutely formed a delegation to come to Quang Ngai to  bring Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang back to Saigon for medical treatment. The administration, on its part, tightened control on UBCV pagodas in Saigon. At Thanh Minh Monastery where the Most Venerable Thich Quang Do was a monk in residence, security police tightened control. Checkpoints were posited at major intersections along Highway Route I from Saigon to Hue. They  kept a close watch on the Buddhist delegates arriving from Saigon and the provinces that were going to come to see the Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang who was kiving in exile at Hoi Quang Pagoda in Quang Ngai.

The Shanga

     In the Heat of Reppression

Targeted with repression, even monks sought to evade the country. On September 19, 2003, the spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry Le Dung announced that Hanoi would bring the Venerable Thich Tri Luc to stand trial before court on charges of instigating in liaison with  overseas Vietnamese organizations a plot to overthrow the Communist regime. The Venerable Thich Tri Luc, a member of the Unified Buddhist Church, evaded to Cambodia in 2002 and was granted political refugee status. He would  be resettled in Canada under the auspices of the UN High Commission or Refugees. In July 2003, the Vietnamese security police, however, came to Cambodia; arrested the monk, and brought him back to Vietnam.

According to the International Buddhist Information Bureau in Paris, the Vietnamese security police executed oorder without regard to international law to abduct a Vietnamese monk who evaded the country as a result of repressin and took refuge in a foreign country. The Venerable Thich Tri Luc, who fled from Vietnam and came to Cambodia in April 2002. The priest, who had narrowly escaped from an instance of religious persecution in his country, disappeared while in residence in Phnom Penh, July 25, 2000. On that day, according to sources in Cambodia, a unidentified person clad in civil clothes suspected to be an agent of the Vietnamese security police. might have come to the shelter of the monk. Since then, there had been no news  of the religious who, in  the previous month, had been accorded the status of political refugee of the UN High Commission for Refugees. The International Buddhist Information Bureau expressed its fear that the interested might have been kidnapped, brought back by force to Vietnam where he could have been interned or possibly eliminated.

The Vietnamese secret police, in fact, had operated raids in Kampuchea and pursued the Montagnards who fled in groups from the Central Highlands of Vietnam and Vietnamese dissidents who sought to come to seek refuge in this country as well. Sources reported that fhe Venerable Thich Tri Luc, aged 58 and a native of the province of Thua Thien – Hue is a disciple of the Most Venerable Thich Don Hau, Since the change of political regime in 1975, the religious had suffered an eventful life. Arrested the first time in 1992 and imprisoned for 10 months, he faced constant pressure from the Communist authorities who had vainly incited him to become a secret agent for  the security police. He  envisaged a self-immolation himself by fire as an act of protest, instead. Later, in 1994, he took part in a Buddhist relief delegation to rescue flood victims in the Mekong plains. He was nevertheless prevented by the police from accomplishing his task. At the court trial that took place in Ho Chi Minh City, August 15, 1995, the monk was accused of crimes of public disorder and sentenced to five years in prison. He served his sentence in a reeducation camp in Xuan Loc, Dong Nai Province. This internment was followed by an assignation to residence surveillance and interdiction to perform public religious activities. As a result of this, the situation became so unbearable for the religious that he made up his mind to flee to Cambodia.

   

After the disappearance of Monk Tri Luc, twenty-two deputies and senators, members of the Party of Sam Ramsey voiced their protest against the arrest of the monk to the Cambodian government. At the European Parliament, the Deputy Olivier Dupuis raised the question regarding the disappearance of the religious. In August 2002, the Honorable Mary Robinson, the U<N< High Commissioner for Human Rights reminded Prime Minister Hun Sen of her fear concerning the abduction of Monk Thich Tri Luc to Vietnam in connection with the case of  two adepts of the religious sect “Falungong” who were abducted to China. International associations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch showed their concerns about the fate of the religious and intervened besides the Cambodian government but gained no  result.  (EDA 350)