HANOI—A parish priest and some 20 other Vietnamese Catholics were detained by police on Friday when they tried to ask local officials to return what they say is church land, a lawyer said.
Tensions between communist authorities and the Thai Ha Redemptorist parish have flared since mid-November when officials moved in to build a sewage reservoir that protesters say is on church land.
“A priest and about 20 Thai Ha faithful were arrested this morning while they were rallying at Hoan Kiem lake (in central Hanoi) to protest the invasion of church properties,” lawyer Le Quoc Quan told Agence France-Presse.
Quan is not representing the detainees but is a member of the parish.
Around 100 people, including the priest and protestors carrying signs, tried to march to the office of the Hanoi People’s Committee — the local government — to file a complaint over what they describe as a seizure of church land.
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