Vietnam releases priest ahead of Obama visit
HANOI (AFP) — Authoritarian Vietnam released one of the country’s longest serving prisoners of conscience on Friday, just days before US President Barack Obama is due to visit, the Catholic Church said.
Nguyen Van Ly, a priest who has spent much of the last two decades either in jail or under house arrest, was released Friday morning, church officials said.
“Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly has returned to the mother diocese on Friday morning after his years and months in (northern) Nam Ha jail,” the archdiocese of Hue said in a short statement on its website.
The site also ran several photos of the ageing priest, dressed in a loose white shirt and baseball cap, being welcomed by church members.
Neither church nor government officials were immediately available for comment.
Father Ly, who is in his early 70s, is often compared to Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi — both are veteran dissidents who have spent years in pursuit of greater democratic freedoms.
But while Myanmar has recently emerged a nascent democracy, Vietnam remains a tightly controlled one-party state.
Ly was jailed three times for a total of 14 years before his fourth and latest imprisonment in March 2007 when he was charged for spreading propaganda against the communist state.
He had been accused of helping to found “Bloc 8406,” considered one of the Vietnam’s first organized pro-democracy coalitions.
He gained prominence with his anti-government actions, including hunger strikes and several widely circulated missives calling for a multi-party system.
Ly was briefly released from jail in March 2010 to seek treatment for a brain tumor and was placed under house arrest.
He was returned to jail more than a year later, sparking calls from the United States and international rights groups for his release.