HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Vietnamese authorities are targeting Communist Party critics 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 Sept. 5, police in Hanoi detained and 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, scholar Tran Van Khue and geologist Nguyen Thanh Giang were also temporarily detained, they said.
Just days before the reported interrogations, Duong and Khue had sought government permission to form an independent anti-corruption organization.
Vietnam's human rights record has come under increasing international scrutiny recently. Last week in Washington, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would tie future non-humanitarian U.S. aid to improvements in Vietnam's human rights record. The bill is still pending in the Senate.
Vietnam, which denies that it holds political or religious prisoners, said the bill "brazenly distorts the reality in Vietnam, grossly interfering in Vietnam's internal affairs."
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 in a park in the central city of Danang on Sept. 2, Vietnam's national day.
In letters written before his death, Anh, a 61-year-old farmer, urged the international community to pressure Vietnam to respect religious freedom and free all people detained because of religious beliefs, the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau said.
Anh said 13 other followers were preparing to do the same.
Vo Tan Sau, deputy leader of the Buddhist Youth Movement in central Quang Nam province, was arrested Sept. 5 with two other Buddhists, the IBIB said. He is believed to still be in detention.
His family has been subjected to interrogations and has been detained in their home, the IBIB said. Several other leaders of the group have been called in for interrogations by local police, it said.
The Buddhist Youth Movement was founded in the late 1930s by the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, one of a number of independent religious groups banned by Vietnam's Communist government, which allows only seven recognized religious organizations. The movement claims a membership of 300,000.
Human Rights Watch called on Vietnam's international donors to protest the detentions when they meet in Tokyo on Nov. 15-16 for an annual development aid conference.
Government officials did not comment on the groups' accusations.