HANOI, 25 Aug 2007 (AP) – Police have arrested a dissident Buddhist monk and eight other people, accusing them of planning illegal demonstrations against Vietnam\u2019s communist government, state media reported Saturday (August 25th).<\/p>\n
Police arrested monk Thich Khong Tanh in Hanoi on Thursday (August 23rd), accusing his outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam of plotting an illicit protest, the Vietnam News Agency<\/em> said.<\/p>\n The report described the church\u2019s chief, Thich Quang Do, as a \u201cgang leader,\u201d and said he had been planning anti-government protests in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.<\/p>\n The article said Do and other church leaders had collaborated with unspecified \u201creactionary forces in exile,\u201d raising money from overseas to finance the protests.<\/p>\n Do sent Tanh to Hanoi with 300 million Vietnamese dong (US$18,750) to use to incite protesters, the agency reported. It did not identify the other people who were arrested.<\/p>\n The International Buddhist Information Bureau, a Paris-based group that supports the church, said in a statement that Tanh had planned to distribute aid to peasants and farmers whose land had been confiscated by corrupt local officials.<\/p>\n International human rights organizations have praised Do for his refusal to accept government control of his church.<\/p>\n Vietnam\u2019s communist government tightly controls religious organizations, which must be officially sanctioned to operate legally in the country. (AP)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HANOI, 25 Aug 2007 (AP) – Police have arrested a dissident Buddhist monk and eight other people, accusing them of planning illegal demonstrations against Vietnam\u2019s communist government, state media reported Saturday (August 25th). Police arrested monk Thich Khong Tanh in Hanoi on Thursday (August 23rd), accusing his outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam of plotting …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-vchr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}