World Movement for Democracy participant Vo Van Ai, president of Quê Me: Action for Democracy in Vietnam, calls on other World Movement participants to support his urgent appeal for the immediate release of two Buddhist monks and prominent dissidents, Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do, who are currently detained incommunicado in Vietnam. Thich Huyen Quang and a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Quang Do are leaders of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), which is Vietnam's most active movement for democracy and human rights. After spending over 20 years in prison and under house arrest for their peaceful appeals for democratic reform, both monks were again arrested on October 8, 2003 in a brutal government crackdown on the banned UBCV. Although they have not been formally charged, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman has announced that they are "under investigation for possessing state secrets," a crime that carries the death penalty in Vietnam. They are both in very poor health, and are denied access to medical care.

Eleven other UBCV monks were placed under house arrest in the October crackdown, and the government has imposed a total communications black-out on the UBCV all over central and southern Vietnam. Hundreds of pagodas have been placed under round-the-clock surveillance, phones have been cut, and hundreds of Buddhist nuns, monks and followers have been detained under house arrest. Security Police have set up jamming devices outside UBCV pagodas which intercept cell phone calls after the very first call. This crackdown totally contradicts promises of greater religious tolerance made by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in a landmark meeting with the detained UBCV Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang in Hanoi in April 2003.