US Ambassador to Vietnam

has trouble getting in to meet with a Catholic priest, as Reuters reports:

...Christian Marchant, a political officer with the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, was roughed up outside a residence where outspoken Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly is being held under house arrest, Radio Free Asia reported.

Police attacked Marchant while barring the American diplomat from meeting with Ly, one of Vietnam's highest-profile human rights advocates, Radio Free Asia said.

"We are aware of and deeply concerned by the incident and have officially registered a strong protest with the Vietnamese government in Hanoi," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"We plan to raise the issue with Ambassador (Le Cong) Phung in Washington as well," Toner added...

The Catholic Church in Vietnam has been facing a number of challenges for some time now.  Samuel Gregg gives an overview:

...if we ever needed proof that Communist regimes don't change their stripes, one need only look at the little-reported but growing confrontation between the Catholic Church in Vietnam and Vietnam's Communist authorities.

There are about 6 million Catholics in Vietnam today (about 8 percent of the population). They are the biggest religious minority in a nation which has been ruled in its entirety by a Communist government since 1975. Like all Communist regimes, Vietnam had its "re-education" camps. The regime has also long harassed the Catholic Church. There is no greater symbol of this than the late Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, widely regarded as a modern saint. Before exiling him, the regime imprisoned him for 13 years, nine of which were spent in solitary confinement...

These stories are replicated all over Vietnam. In response, thousands of Catholics have mounted peaceful public protests for almost a year. As Amnesty International reports, the state's reply has been intimidation and violence. Lay Catholics have been denounced in typical Marxist terms as "counter-revolutionaries", arrested, and subjected to show-trials. Nuns and priests have been savagely beaten by police and "counter-demonstrators". One woman told Amnesty, "they shout bad words about our mothers and fathers, and say things like 'kill the archbishop' and 'kill the priests.'"

Vietnam is a country where Marxism, aptly described by Kolakowski as "the greatest fantasy of our century," has once again been exposed as nothing more than a useful cover for a corrupt political class to maintain its power and live at everyone else's expense. And, once again, Christians and the cause of religious liberty are paying the price.

Robert Royal recounts the end of one Vietnamese martyr's life here:

...On September 2, 1945, Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the country’s independence. Van fled to Saigon in the South. He took final vows with the Redemptorists and busied himself at various simple tasks. When the country was cut in two after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, masses of people, Catholic and not, fled to the South. But according to Van, “Jesus had insisted” that he was needed where the trouble was greatest. Van immediately flew to the North on Sept. 14, the Feast of the Cross: “I am going so that in the midst of the Communists, there will be someone who loves Our Dear Lord.”

Van was quietly conducting his duties when one day he went out shopping. Hearing some agents provocateurs spreading lies about the South, he blurted out, “I have just come from the South and the government has never done anything like that!” He was taken to Sureté headquarters, where a familiar pattern began. Interrogations went on for several days from seven in the morning until midnight seeking Van’s confession — of what is not clear.

He spent five months in solitary confinement during sweltering summer heat. Then he was transferred to the main Hanoi prison and locked up with other “reactionaries.” Notes he wrote were smuggled out. One to his Superior read: “It would be easy for me to stay alive: all I would have to do is make an accusation against you. Don’t be afraid, I would never do it. . . . I will resist to the death.” The prison officials used brain-washing techniques to break him and prevent his dying a “heroic” death. Near the end, he got out a message, “Today, I am a corpse who can still breathe. . . .I am the victim of Love. Love is my joy, an indestructible joy.”

A show trial, during which he displayed great calm and dignity, ensued, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for spreading propaganda. Other prisoners flocked to him because of the strength he displayed. Perhaps because of this good effect on the others, he was transferred to a new prison: Camp 2 at Yeh Binh. There he endured the worst treatment of all: he was beaten and put in a dark cell for two years and, at the beginning of 1958, chained up for three months with no outside contacts. When he was finally set loose from the special confinement, he had tuberculosis and beri-beri. His body was emaciated. On June 10, 1959, he groaned and quietly passed away, leaving some future Vietnam to absorb the spiritual lessons of his life.