(Hue, Vietnam, 12/6/2020) --- According to tradition of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), the annual Great Prayers Ceremony is to commemorate spirits of great teachers of the past, saints, and ancestors who constitute the sacred soul of Vietnam as a nation. The Ceremony also gives prayers to soldiers who sacrificed and people who lost their lives to wars and natural disasters. Prayers are for goodness to prevail, evil to diminish, integrity of territorial land and waters, and freedom from slavery under the contemporary North. This year's Great Prayers Ceremony was scheduled for December 7, 2020 at Long Quang Monastery, Central Office of the UBCV, Huong Tra town, Thua Thien Hue province. - On December 5, 2020, the Senior Most Venerable Thich Nhat Ban, President of UBCV’s Institute for the Dissemination of the Dharma was about to leave for Hue to preside over the Ceremony when Dong Nai’s provincial authorities and police came to stop him from going. As there was no isolation order, forbidding him from traveling was a violation of the law and an infringement on the freedom of religion and his human rights. After 3 hours of interrogation, the authorities lock downed his Ba La Mat Pagoda and stopped him from leaving. - At the same time, UBCV’s Office of External Affairs received news that Buddhist Youth Organizations (BYOs) in Phu Vang District, Thua Thien-Hue Province, were prohibited by the authorities from attending the Ceremony. Specifically, with Hoa Da Tay BYO, local police and authorities came to Leader Le Van Tho's house and threatened him and his youth members not to attend the Ceremony at Long Quang Monastery. - The police and the authorities gave the same prohibitions to Ms. Hoang Thi Huong, Director of the Women's Branch of the BYO’s National Steering Committee, Provincial Deputy Director of the BYO in Thua Thien, and Leader of Ha Uc BYO. - Leader Nguyen Tuan of Tien Non BYO was prohibited by the authorities from going and taking his youth members to the Ceremony. On behalf of the UBCV, the Institute strongly condemns the anti-religious, anti-FoRB actions of the authorities and the police. The Institute directs its Director of Communications and Office of External Affairs to respectfully submit an Urgent Report to religious and human rights protection agencies of the United Nations and around the world, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the US Department of State, the US Embassy and Consulates in Vietnam, and the embassies and consulates of the States which have an abiding interest in the UBCV, which is still persecuted and banned for the past 45 years. The Institute asks them to intervene and pressure the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Vietnam authorities to restore the legal rights of the people-founded Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and allow the UBCV the freedom of religion afforded by the international conventions of which Vietnam is a signatory. ###
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