Hanoi Going After Critics, Group Says
Vietnamese authorities are targeting critics of the Communist Party and Buddhists in a new crackdown, religious and human rights groups charged Monday.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said more than a dozen political dissidents were detained and interrogated last week in what it described as “the largest and most systematic effort to intimidate Vietnamese dissidents in a long time.”
On Wednesday, police in Hanoi interrogated 15 democracy activists, including former military historian Pham Que Duong, writer Hoang Tien, former high-ranking party cadre Hoang Minh Chinh, journalist Nguyen Vu Binh and film producer Duong Hung, diplomats said. In southern Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), scholar Tran Van Khue and geologist Nguyen Thanh Giang were also detained, they said.
Meanwhile, a Buddhist group said police arrested and threatened members of the Buddhist Youth Movement after a member, Ho Tan Anh, burned himself to death to protest religious repression.
Anh, a member of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, set himself on fire Sept. 2
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