Post #107

Excerpt from the Catholic News Agency: US lodges strong protest with Vietnam after beating of American diplomat

by Marianne Medlin, Staff Writer
Washington D.C., Jan 8, 2011

The U.S. State Department lodged a sharp protest with the Vietnamese government after a U.S. diplomat was beaten in the country for attempting to visit an ailing Catholic priest who is under house arrest.

The recent incident joins a string of human rights abuses involving Vietnamese police using violence against the country's inhabitants.

Radio Free Asia reported on Jan. 5 that the U.S. has lodged a "strong protest" with the Vietnamese government after local policemen attacked Christian Marchant – a political officer with the U.S. embassy in Hanoi – while he was trying to visit a Catholic priest.

Marchant, a practicing Mormon who lives in Hanoi, Vietnam with his wife and two children, was allegedly beaten outside a home for retired priests in Hue, where 63 year-old Father Nguyen Van Ly, a pro-democracy activist, is being held under house arrest. Father Ly was released from prison on medical parole last year. The diplomat had a pre-arranged meeting with Father Ly, who later told the RFA that he witnessed Marchant being wrestled to the ground, placed in a police vehicle and driven away. Police reportedly shut a car door numerous times on Marchant's legs.

“The United States Government, both here in Hanoi and in Washington, has lodged a strong, official protest with the Government of Vietnam,” said U.S. Ambassador Michael W. Michalak at a press conference concluding his three year term in the country on Jan. 6. “We are waiting for an official response from the Government of Vietnam.”

Mark Toner, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, reported in a Jan. 6 briefing that although Marchant was “injured during that incident,” the diplomat was “up and walking around now.”

The U.S. State Department has summoned the Vietnamese ambassador in Washington to protest the incident, Toner said.

Officials from the Vietnamese embassy to the U.S. in Washington, D.C. did not respond to a request for comment from CNA.

Reports on human rights abuses in Vietnam – particularly against religious minorities such as Catholics – have caused an outcry among U.S. political leaders.

Beatings, Church raids, arrests – and even deaths – are some of the violent incidents that have been inflicted on Catholics by authorities in Vietnam over increased conflict related to property rights. Throughout the last several decades, in provinces throughout the country, tensions have mounted between the Communist government and local parishioners as officials have repeatedly attempted to claim land where Catholic churches and facilities are situated.

Sources include
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/us-lodges-strong-protest-with-vietnam-after-beating-of-american-diplomat/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Vietnam
http://www.fva.org/200107/story02.htm
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/81626.htm
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2011/01/154053.htm