Vietnam under pressure to release jailed priest

Vietnam on Wednesday faced calls from the United States and international rights groups to free a frail dissident priest who was re-arrested after being released from jail for medical treatment. Nguyen Van Ly, who prosecutors say was a founding member of a banned pro-democracy group, was taken into custody Monday. The priest, who is in his 60s, had left prison last year to seek treatment for a brain tumour. Expressing concern over the decision to arrest him, a State Department spokeswoman said "We urge the government of Vietnam to release him immediately". "Father Ly suffers from a brain tumour and should continue to be allowed to seek medical treatment," acting deputy State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke Fulton said. She added: "No individual should be imprisoned for expressing the right to free speech." President Barack Obama's administration has been building relations with Vietnam, offering encouragement to the former war foe, which like many Southeast Asian nations has had rising friction at sea with China. Leonard Leo, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which advises the government, noted that the United States had helped mediate Vietnam's dispute with China over the South China Sea. "And in response they seize a frail Catholic priest who has peacefully advocated for religious freedom and the rule of law," he said. "The Obama administration cannot maintain a strategy that advances Vietnam's security and economic interests without seeking concrete improvements on US interests in religious freedom and the rule of law," Leo said. Ly is serving an eight-year sentence after being convicted of propaganda against the state in 2007. Prosecutors said he was a founding member of the banned "Bloc 8406", considered by analysts as the first organised pro-democracy coalition inside the country. US-based Human Rights Watch said Ly must now serve five more years behind bars, followed by five years of probationary house arrest. "Throwing Father Ly back in prison only compounds the cruelty and injustice of his original sentence," the watchdog said, raising concerns that his health could further deteriorate. Amnesty International said it views Ly as a "prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for his peaceful pro-democracy work". "Father Nguyen Van Ly is in very poor health and should never have been arrested in the first place," said the rights group's Deputy Asia Pacific director Donna Guest. Congressman Ed Royce, a Republican whose California district has a large Vietnamese American presence, expressed concern over Ly's fate and called the Vietnamese action "unconscionable". "If Vietnam wants to improve relations with the US, it cannot continue to mistreat its own people. The government can start by releasing Father Ly," Royce said. The US State Department said that Vietnam arrested at least 25 activists last year. But in a rare move, authorities last month released dissident writer Tran Khai Thanh Thuy into exile in the United States.