HANOI - A Catholic priest detained last week in communist Vietnam is an opportunist who abused religion as part of a wider plot to undermine socialism, an official newspaper said on Monday.
The state-run Hanoi Moi (New Hanoi) newspaper said anti-communist agitation by opponents like Father Nguyen Van Ly had increased as a key congress of the ruling party approached.
"We need to be on alert to destroy their sheer fabrications," the paper said.
"Ly's tricks were part of the plot to undermine the regime, to cause political instability," it said. "(It is) a wicked plot in a chain in the peaceful evolution movements by hostile forces against socialism."
The congress the paper referred to is the supreme event in a communist system like Vietnam's. Held every five years and expected next in March or April it is expected to approve leadership changes and the country economic and political direction for the coming decade.
"The closer the Party congress gets, the more active the hostile forces are in trying to agitate people against the policy and the organisation of the Party through more wicked plots," the paper said.
Ly, 54, was put under "administrative detention" in the central province of Thua Thien Hue last week and branded a traitor in state newspapers after he urged the U.S. Congress not to ratify an historic bilateral trade pact because of rights abuses.
Last month, in testimony prepared for a hearing in Washington of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, he said Washington should not give support to Vietnam's communists to "prolong their totalitarian dictatorship." He also branded revolutionary hero Ho Chi Minh a war criminal.
The trade pact was signed last July after years of haggling and will give Vietnam access to the massive U.S. market. But it has still to be approved by the U.S. Congress and Vietnam's National Assembly.
Ratification is vital if Vietnam is to achieve its aim of boosting its export industries and levels of foreign investment, which have slumped since peaks in the mid-1990s, but analysts say recent human rights issues that have cropped up will make for a rough ride in the U.S. Congress.
The U.S. State Department's latest annual report on human rights in Vietnam, one of the world's few remaining communist states, described its record as poor despite some improvements.
It pointed to continued repression of basic political and some religious freedoms and detention of some believers.
Hanoi, which denies restricting religious or other rights, called the report and the earlier religious commission meeting unacceptable interference in its internal affairs.
03:06 03-05-01
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