Thích Huyền Quang

Thích Huyền Quang
TitleTăng thống
(Patriarch)
Personal life
Born
Lê Đình Nhàn

(1919-09-19)19 September 1919
Bình Định Province, Vietnam, French Indochina
Died5 July 2008(2008-07-05) (aged 88)
Hồ Chí Minh City, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
NationalityVietnamese
Religious life
ReligionBuddhism
DenominationThiền
SchoolLâm Tế (Linji Chan School)

Thích Huyền Quang (19 September 1919 – 5 July 2008) was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, dissident and activist. At the time, he was the Patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, a currently banned organisation in his homeland. He was notable for his activism for human and religious rights in Vietnam.

In 1977, Quang wrote a letter to then-Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng detailing counts of oppression by the communist regime. For this, he and five other senior monks were arrested and detained. In 1982, he was arrested and put on permanent house arrest for opposition to governmental policy after publicly denouncing the establishment of the state-controlled Vietnam Buddhist Sangha.

In 2002, he was awarded the Homo Homini Award for his human rights activism by the Czech group People in Need, which he shared with Thích Quảng Độ and Father Nguyễn Văn Lý.