Forty-seven years and one month ago today this picture was taken at a busy crossroads in Saigon, North Vietnam. It shook the world. President Kennedy nearly fell out of bed reading the paper the following morning, exclaiming, "Jesus Christ!"Buddhists monk Thích Quảng Đức, (b. 1897 – d. 11 June 1963) Burned himself to death with gasoline and a match to protest the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Ngô Đình Diệm administration.
As much as I strive to walk the middle path and veer not too far to one or the other side concerning my emotions or beliefs, this act deserves a moment of silent respect and at the same absolute grief and compassion. This sixty-six year old Buddhist monk had seen his country raped and pillaged by it's own government for years. The Vietnam War had raged for several years already and it appeared as though South Vietnam was going to end up with the same type of intolerant government as the North... but with a literalist religious slant.
The First Lady of South Vietnam is quoted as saying she would "clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue show."
In the end, pressure by the United States forced Diệm to sign the Joint Communique which (supposedly) gave religious and social equality to the people of the country.
The Buddhists pushed for a five point agreement: freedom to fly religious flags, an end to arbitrary arrests, compensation for the Huế victims, punishment for the officials responsible and religious equality. Diệm labeled the Buddhists as "damn fools" for demanding something that, according to him, they already enjoyed.
Diệm was a staunch Catholic and blatantly favored those countrymen of the religious group.
Wiki says:
In a country where surveys of the religious composition at the time estimated the Buddhist majority to be between 70 and 90 percent,[5][6][7][8] President Ngô Đình Diệm was a member of the Catholic Vietnamese minority, and pursued policies widely regarded by historians as biased. Specifically, the government was regarded as favoring Roman Catholics for public service and military promotions, as well as in the allocation of land, business arrangements and tax concessions.[9] Diệm once told a high-ranking officer, forgetting that he was a Buddhist, "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted."[10] Many officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam converted to Roman Catholicism in the belief that their military prospects depended on it.[10] Additionally, the distribution of firearms to village self-defense militias saw weapons only given to Roman Catholics, with some Buddhists in the army being denied promotion if they refused to convert to Roman Catholicism.[11] Some Roman Catholic priests ran their own private armies,[12] and there were forced conversions and looting, shelling and demolition of pagodas in some areas, to which the government turned a blind eye.[13] Some Buddhist villages converted en masse to receive aid or avoid being forcibly resettled by Diệm's regime.[14] The "private" status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French, which required official permission to be obtained by those wishing to conduct public Buddhist activities, was not repealed by Diệm.[15] Roman Catholics were also de facto exempt from the corvée labor that the government obliged all citizens to perform, and U.S. aid was disproportionately distributed to Roman Catholic majority villages by Diệm's regime.[16] The Roman Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country and enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and land owned by the Roman Catholic Church was exempt from land reform.[17] The white and gold Vatican flag was regularly flown at all major public events in South Vietnam,[18] and Diệm dedicated his country to the Virgin Mary in 1959.[16]
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Diệm was the Vietnamese version of Hitler. He was a literal nobody who after decades of worming his way into Joseph McCarthy's arms managed to garner American support to liberate Vietnam from the colonialist French and communist elements from the North. That's not so bad. But once Diệm got power he decided that the majority religious group in his country had to be subjugated- the Buddhists.
Catholicism murdered South Vietnam. It's really that simple. It wasn't only a war against communists. It was about personal favoritism, trade, and control. What is truly disheartening to learn is that whatever Diệm's faults he was ultimately the only chance South Vietnam had for separating from the communist North.
With US support, Diệm was assassinated by his own General on November 2st, 1963.
The North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh is reported to have said, "I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid." The political chaos afterward did indeed reveal just how idiotic the US was to support such a coup instead of taking alternate actions to assist in humanitarian ways. South Vietnam fell and it hasn't risen since.
Diệm was a US puppet who got out of control. Publicity about a monk immolating himself in protest to human rights abuses got out and suddenly the US couldn't stop the train wreck they'd set up years ago. It was imminent. There was no stopping it. Diệm refused to see reason and kept the violence escalating even after the Communique was signed.
President Nguyễn Minh Triết, the current president of South Vietnam was formerly the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Hồ Chí Minh City. The country is communist and has been since.
Does it seem as though only evil has happened since our monk made such a sacrifice? On the surface it appears so; that his sacrifice was in vain. But let us look deeper.
The day after Thích Quảng Đức self-immolated, the entire world was brought to it's knees in mourning. (Excluding China and North Vietnam, of course.) The world mourned that such a sacrifice apparently had to take place in order to garner attention to what was truly happening. The monk was only concerned with doing what he thought was right. The rest he left up to the people. And that is where responsibility always lies: with the people. The monk did not think he would miraculously stop war with his actions. He knew there was much more bloodshed to come. But he wanted to get word out and take a stand.
The gnostic gospel of Philip says,
Light and darkness, life and death,
on the right and left, these are children,
they are inseparable together.
But the good are not good, the wicked not wicked,
life not life, death not death.
Each element fades to an original source.
But those who live above the world cannot fade.
They are eternal.
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