DIS: Vietnam expulsion draws concern
Date: 6/7/01 8:40:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time
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Copyright 2001 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
June 7, 2001, Thursday, BC Cycle
11:54 Central European Time
HEADLINE: ROUNDUP: Vietnam expulsion
draws concern
DATELINE: Hanoi
The expulsion from Vietnam of two Europeans, including a member of the European Parliament, was viewed with mounting concern among diplomatson Thursday as Vietnam's rights record once again drew international attention.
Olivier Dupuis, a Belgian member of the European Parliament, and Germany's Martin Schulthes were expelled Wednesday following what was believed to be the first public protest within the country by Westerners in support of human rights since the end of the Vietnam War.
Dupuis, who is head of Europe's Transnational Radical Party, and party delegate Schulthes "were carrying out activities against their purpose of immigration," Vietnam Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Sy Vuong Ha told a news conference in Hanoi.
Ha said they arrived in Vietnam on tourist visas but were "causing disorder in Ho Chi Minh City." He declined to provide details. The embassies of Belgium and Germany expressed frustration that Hanoi had not yet informed them of the decision to deport the two men.
"International practice is that if a foreign national
is expelled, that country's consulate should be informed in due time,"
said Achim Burkart, Germany's deputy chief of mission in Hanoi.
"We wish to discuss this with the Vietnam
government," he said.
The chief of the European Union delegation, Frederic Baron, was scheduled to meeting with foreign ministry officials on Friday. Schulthes, who spoke to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone shortly after his return to Brussels on Thursday, said he and Dupuis were treated respectfully but he was quick to attack what he considered Vietnam's policy of repression.
"There is no religious freedom in Vietnam, only harassment of the persons that stand for it," he said.
The two men were detained Wednesday in Ho Chi Minh City after staging a demonstration outside the gates of the Thanh Minh Zen Monastery where Vietnam's most recognised dissident Buddhist monk, the venerable Thich Quang Do, is detained under house arrest.
"Mr. Dupuis is the first Westerner in 26 years, since the fall of Saigon in April 1975, to stage a public protest in solidarity with dissidents in communist Vietnam," said a statement by the exiled office of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV). Do, the number two leader of the UBCV and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was confined June 1 to two years administrative detention.
He had been preparing for a Thursday showdown with police by vowing to travel to central Vietnam and escort ailing UBCV patriarch Thich Huyen Quang to Ho Chi Minh City for medical treatment. Do and Quang have each spent more than 20 years in jail or exile for urging religious freedoms and human rights in Vietnam, with Do being released in a presidential amnesty in 1998.
Diplomats in touch with religious figures in the city said there was "no way" Do could have travelled on his mission Thursday. The UBCV said 10 plainclothes police were patrolling Do's monastery "like prison wardens", and that Do is locked inside a virtual prison cell, "forbidden to set foot outside the door".
Quang's pagoda in central Vietnam was also under heavy guard. The events came just as Washington was set to send a historic U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement to Congress for a vote this week. A U.S. religious commission called on Congress to pass a resolution demanding Vietnam make further improvements to its record on religious freedom as a prerequisite for ratifying the trade pact.
Hanoi's foreign ministry shot back in a written statement: "Any outside interference into the internal affairs of Vietnam is unacceptable." dpa mm wp
EDITOR-NOTE:
EDs: releads, adds quotes from
expelled German and embassies