Senior Buddhist monk Thich Huyen Quang was admitted to Binh Dinh General Hospital on May 27 due to his breathing difficulties and heart failure. He had received medical treatment and good care from the doctors, his assistants and followers until he passed away on July 5 at the age of 90.
While he was in hospital, representatives from the Government Committee for Religious Affairs, the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, the Executive Councils of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha chapters in Binh Dinh, Thua Thien-Hue and Khanh Hoa provinces and other localities visited to inquire into his health and they all wished him a quick recovery.
However, several elements who claimed to represent the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau made slanderous charges against the local authorities and the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, saying that the administration is to blame for no religious freedom in Vietnam.
In fact, they have recently worked in cahoots with other reactionaries wearing monk’s robes to besmirch and sabotage the Vietnamese State. This time, on the pretext of Thich Huyen Quang’s death, they tried to revitalise an outlawed organisation called the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) on July 5 quoted the Most Venerable Thich Thien Tanh, deputy head of the Executive Board of the Ho Chi Minh City Buddhist Sangha as saying “while the local authorities, Buddhist dignitaries, monks and nuns were worried about Thich Huyen Quang’s health and wished for his quick recovery, Thich Quang Do and some elements from the International Buddhist Information Bureau were deliberately going against the principles of Buddhism philosophy.”
For Buddhists, this is an inhuman act against not only the Vietnamese people’s moral tradition but also Buddha’s teaching. There is no denying that the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau, led by Vo Van Ai, has lent a helping hand to reactionaries in exile to oppose and sabotage the Vietnamese State. According to the western media, since the early 1990s, Ai has collaborated closely with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a reactionary organisation in the US which operates like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but terms itself as an agency fighting for democracy.
The NED has provided Ai with approximately US$90,000 annually to run the International Buddhist Information Bureau, with the only task of making press releases to blame Vietnam for violating human rights and religious freedoms. In the eyes of the public, the bureau is nothing but a mouthpiece to serve opportunist, conservative and hostile forces who are trying to obstruct the country’s national construction and development.
By claiming that the funeral service for Thich Huyen Quang should be in the care of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, Thich Quang Do and some other reactionaries attempted to turn the funeral into a fanfare of trumpets for the long-defunct church.
It is worth mentioning that Thich Huyen Quang was a senior Buddhist monk and one of the founders of the Nguyen Thieu monastery in central Binh Dinh province. Therefore, Buddhist monks, nuns and followers in Binh Dinh and the Nguyen Thieu monastery will take care of holding the funeral service for the dead monk to honour him as a supreme patriarch of Vietnamese Buddhism. Vietnamese Buddhists never allow any individuals or organisations to make use of the event to achieve their political aims because this is an insult to the ethics of the Vietnamese people, including Buddhist monks, nuns and followers.
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