HANOI, March 26 (AFP) - Defying a mounting chorus of human rights criticism, Vietnam's communist authorities Monday prepared to further punish a Catholic priest who dared to speak out to Washington about violations of religious freedom here.
A house arrest order imposed earlier this month had failed to silence Father Tadeus Nguyen Van Ly, one of the main official dailies said.
He should now be "punished severely by the courts" for his persistent defiance of the regime, said armed forces mouthpiece Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's Army).
The authorities had erred in not taking tougher action against the whistleblower priest after he spoke out to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom last month.
"Nguyen Van Ly is continuing to conduct an insane campaign of sabotage, provocation and defiance against the regime.
"Why didn't we take take swifter steps to force Nguyen Van Ly to end his religious propaganda?" the paper asked.
The daily did not specify what charges should be pressed against the "reactionary" cleric or when any trial might begin.
But a similar tirade against the priest from the imperial capital of Hue appeared in an official daily on March (eds: correct) 3, just hours before he was placed under "administrative surveillance."
The army daily demanded that Ly be defrocked for what it said was his repeated abuse of the priesthood to undermine the government.
The fact that "he has still not been deprived of his position in the Catholic church" had enabled him to go on "sparking disturbances by denouncing religious repression" in a campaign of "sabotage against the (communist) party and the state," it said.
Father Tadeus seems to have provoked the renewed anger of the authorities by attempting to organize a joint campaign for religious freedom with other religious groups.
He met the dissident leader of a Buddhist sect who led a demonstration in a Ho Chi Minh City park last week to demand the lifting of the house arrest order against him, another official daily revealed Monday.
The 81-year-old unofficial leader of the Hoa Hao sect Le Quang Liem had travelled from the commercial capital to Ly's home in Hue to "discuss anti-regime plots with the fake priest," the mouthpiece of the police force, Cong An Nhan Dan (People's Police) said.
Liem was himself placed under house arrest for two years for organizing the March 18 protest by a dozen dissident leaders of the sect and several dozen female followers.
The communist authorities charge that the Hoa Hao demonstrators planned a "mass self-immolation," which was only foiled by prompt action from Ho Chi Minh City police.
Clothes "doused in petrol" had been confiscated from the demonstrators, several of whom had confessed that they were asked by Liem to take part in a mass suicide, the army daily said Sunday.
One dissident Hoa Hao leader, women's chief, Nguyen Thi Thu, 75, did burn herself to death in a village south of the commercial capital the following day.
But the sect's US supporters say she did so in protest at Liem's detention and despite repeated efforts by the outlawed leadership to talk her out of earlier threats to take her own life.
The question of religious freedom has sparked mounting US criticism of the communist authorities' human rights record just as Congress prepares to consider ratification of a landmark trade agreement which is a key plank of their economic reforms.
Ly infuriated the authorities by openly calling on Congress to delay ratification in his evidence to the US freedoms commission.
The priest, who is a persistent critic of the communist regime, was forced to submit his evidence in writing after he was barred him from travelling to Washington for the February 13 hearing.