8/01/2010Bangkok Post
Vietnamese police on Friday blocked AFP journalists from an area where, according to a priest, several Catholics were wounded when police used tear gas in a dispute over a crucifix.
"This is a special order," a plainclothes immigration policeman said when AFP reporters tried to enter one road leading to Dong Chiem parish, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) from central Hanoi in My Duc district.
At the only other access road, several policemen also refused to let the reporters pass.
One immigration officer said there was a "land dispute" and people were not allowed to enter for their own protection.
The immigration police specialise in dealing with foreigners. Except for an AFP reporter, no other foreigners were visible in the farming area where buffalo worked the fields.
Unrest broke out before dawn on Wednesday when parishioners tried to stop a large group of police and troops sent to dismantle the crucifix on top of a mountain, said Nguyen Van Huu, the parish priest.
He said parishioners told him the police used electric prods, tear gas and stones against the crowd, two of whom were seriously injured and taken to Hanoi for treatment.
Four or five other parishioners were hurt, said the priest, who was not present at the time of the incident. Troops succeeded in dismantling the cross, he added.
As described by the priest, the clash was one of the most serious recent incidents in a long-running series of church-state land disputes.
"The people have not fully recovered yet," he said by telephone on Friday.
Police have refused to comment, and no one answered the phone Friday at the local government office, the People's Committee.
Huu said local authorities argued that the cross -- which replaced a wooden crucifix destroyed many years ago during wartime -- was built without permission last year on state-managed land.
"In fact, we have used this land for more than 100 years," he said.
Whether they will try to put up another cross is unclear, the priest added.
"Now we have to stabilise the situation and whether we will rebuild the cross or not, we have to consider," he said, adding that the law does not forbid them from doing so.
Officials began seizing church property, along with many other buildings and farms, more than 50 years ago when communists took power in what was then North Vietnam.
In December 2007, Catholics began a series of demonstrations over seized land that sometimes involved hundreds of protesters.
Vietnam has Southeast Asia's second largest Catholic community after the Philippines, with at least six million followers.
The government says it respects freedom of religion.
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