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| Confrontations between protestors and police |
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| Bishops among protestors |
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| Ten thousand protestors on Sunday morning |
State media on Sunday evening carried a statement from Nguyen The Thao, the chairman of People’s Committee of Hanoi City in which he accused Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of inciting riots, falsely accusing the government, ridiculing the law, and disrespecting the nation.
“On Sep. 19,2008, on behalf of the archbishop’s office, he [the prelate] signed ‘an urgent protest letter’ to the President and the Priminister with distortional information to falsely accuse the government disrespecting the law, challenging the state with words such as ‘We have our rights to use all of our capabilities to protect our property’,” Thao wrote.
“After that, the archbishop’s office used loud speaker …to read the letter,” he added.
Thao went on accused Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of treason when “sending letter everywhere to call for communion… smearing the state”. He stated that “his [the prelate] deeds have angered people of the capital.”
“These behaviours of offending the law, going against the benefits of state and nation must be punish severly in order to defense our regime, to protect rights and legitimate benefits of the state and citizens,” he concluded.
Thousands of Catholics demonstrated in Hanoi on Sunday morning following another protest of more than 5000 on Saturday evening, after the authorities began to demolish the Apostolic Nunciature and lay siege to several more church buildings.
In what was the largest protest since the Communist takeover in 1954, Bishop Joseph Dang Duc Ngan of Lang Son and hundreds of priests led a march of more than ten thousand through the city to the nunciature where they set up an altar and statue of Our Lady in the street.
The site has been surrounded by rolls of barbed wire and a police cordon with dogs. Inside hundreds of men worked round the clock to pull down the building and construct a library and a park while protesters sang hymns and prayed outside.
Meanwhile at Thai Ha Church, a Redemptorist monastery which is also the center of a longstanding property dispute, at 1 am local time on Monday morning, street gang backed by police attacked Saint Gerardo Chapel. The chapel was ransacked with statues destroyed, and books torn down to rubble.
Redemptorists reported that “The gang yelled out slogans asking for killings of Hanoi archbishop and Fr. Matthew Vu Khoi Phung, Superior of Thai Ha monasteries. Protestors who slept inside the chapel were evacuated into the monastery.”
The gang dismissed after they failed to get inside the monastery. “All statues of Our Lady where protestors pray every day were completely destroyed. They [the gang] threw rubbles inside the yard of the monastery,” the report added.
It was the second time within a week gang street attacked Thai Ha church. At about 1 am local time on Friday, they attacked the altar used to celebrate open air Mass for the protestors. The altar was ransacked and statues of the Virgin Mary were sprayed with used motor oil.