Hơn 2.000 người đã tham dự buổi thắp nến tại quảng trường Federation Square, Melbourbe. Buổi thắp nến đã gây tiếng vang sâu rộng trên các phương tiện truyền thông đại chúng của Úc Đại Lợi. Video này tường trình bài nói chuyện của cha Anthony Nguyễn Hữu Quảng, và của Đức Cha phụ tá Melbourne Hilton Deakin.
Bằng một giọng hùng hồn và cương quyết cha Quảng đã tố giác những đàn áp, không tôn trọng công lý của chính quyền Hà Nội… kết án chính quyền đã dùng hết mọi thủ đoạn vũ lực cũng như truyền thông bóp méo sự thật và bôi nhọ thanh danh của Đức Tổng Giám Mục Hà Nội, Giuse Ngô Quang Kiệt, các tu sĩ và giáo dân ôn hòa cầu nguyện. Bài chào mừng và phát biểu của linh mục đã thu hút được quảng đại quần chúng đi vào bầu khí cầu nguyện hiệp thông…
Kế tiếp là lời phát biểu thật mạnh mẽ và cương quyết của Đức Giám Mục Hilton Deakin. Ngài kết án những bất công và chà đạp công lý của chính quyền Việt Nam. Ngài ngợi khen tinh thần hiệp thông của đồng bào Việt Nam tại Melbourne dù xa quê vẫn nhớ tới Giáo Hội và quê nhà Việt Nam. Ngài ngưỡng phục Đức Tổng Giám Mục Ngô Quang Kiệt, một giám mục trẻ trung và quả cảm. Ngài cảm thông những khó khăn đàn áp mà ĐTGM đang hứng chịu trước một thể chế không tôn trọng nhân quyền và công lý. Ngài nói rõ cho những người đang hiện diện cầu nguyện tối nay, nếu qúi vị ở tại Hà Nội, qúi vị sẽ bị bao vây bởi công an, quân đội cũng như chó săn, họ nhục mạ qúi vị! Có lẽ qúi vị cũng bị theo dõi và có thể bị bắt bớ… Ngài kết án những bất công của chính quyền Hà Nội và lên tiếng mời gọi các chính khách cũng như Vatican can thiệp.
Ngài nói như sau:
Welcome here tonight to this demonstration, it’s an unusual demonstration for Federation Square. I’ve already been here three times this year but I’ve never been here for pray vigil and it takes the Vietnamese people to bring one here so to do.
Great to have you with us. Why are we here tonight? Well we heard the speakers talk to us about what’s going in Vietnam and particularly in the Archdioceses of Hanoi.
Did you notice on the screen tonight? What happens to people like you? We gather together to hold candles and to pray and you’re on one side of a razored barbe wired fence, did you notice? Women, children, priest the lot and on the other side soldiers, with machine guns, police with batons. And then to be shown pictures of old women bashed up because they were doing these sorts of things, the very sorts of things that you and I are doing here in Melbourne tonight. And I think one of things to remember my dear friends, that as we gather here tonight to protest and to pray and to try and have the attention of this awesome and awful affair come to the notice of the fellow citizens here, and if you were here in Hanoi tonight you would also be arrested and put behind barbe wire and that’s the gift of this country.
We’re gathered here Vietnamese who are people praying for the people of their country of origin. Citizens now at this country but are harking back to what’s happening in the old country, first thing. The second thing is that we pray for Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet whose slowly being having his character assassinated to be brought down, young Archbishop that he is to be brought down so that he could become an ineffective pastor of his people his already suffering for the probation and limitations that police manipulation and surveillance imposed upon him, his not the only one.
There are priests in jail we know what priests in jail have to go through in Japan I was sitting beside one over here tonight who spent 3 years in jail trying to be a catholic, he was thrown into prison for it and that’s the story and that’s what we’re protesting about, and it’s not the only thing. Your people over the centuries have done things like buying land and building buildings so that people can give glory to God and express their faith as community when they gather in churches now there is protests and there has being protests in Sydney and other cities here in Australia, there were protests in Hanoi and the authorities in Rome said to the people in Hanoi last February had to cut this out ‘No more protesting’ we think we are getting somewhere with the governments, the federal government in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City so no more protests the government what did it do, you know what it did, it stalled and then it stalled and then it stalled some more until I heard either this week or last week they’re going to bulldoze the Vatican’s offices in Hanoi, destroy it and turn it into a children’s playground and that sort of thing is a sign of somebody who doesn’t believe in the freedoms that you and I exercise here tonight.
It’s the these sorts of things that we are together but it’s also we’re not just not here we’re hoping that this message will go on the airwaves on the ABC and the SBS and wherever and that other people in Australia of goodwill will get behind you to help in these protests, if we do we can do something we can call upon the Prime Minister his often out of the country I’m told, maybe he can go to Vietnam maybe send across a message or get the foreign minister to do so to say ‘Hey, we protest about this the Australian citizens who came from Vietnam protest about it, why don’t you give us back some of the freedoms, given back to the people, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of worship, that’s what they want that’s we’ve got and we want them to share it too. So tonight my dear friends, I think I speak behalf of you people but also I can, without getting into any trouble I’ll be speaking of behalf of all Catholics of goodwill and all other citizens of this country of goodwill when we say ‘Condemn what is being done to our fellow Christian people in Vietnam’ pray God that he will have mercy upon us all that will strengthen our arm and our elbow so that there will be freedom in Vietnam.
Thank you for listening to me.
Thúy Dung
Thông Tấn Xã Công Giáo Việt Nam
