Witness to history

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon, Vietnam. Eye witness accounts state that Thich Quang Duc and at least two fellow monks arrived at the intersection by car, Thich Quang Duc got out of the car, assumed the traditional lotus position and the accompanying monks helped him pour gasoline over himself. He ignited the gasoline by lighting a match and burned to death in a matter of minutes. http://www.geocities.com/tcartz/sacrifice.htm

In a couple of weeks will be the anniversary of the beginning of the end for the ex-South Vietnamese regime, with the coup that ended in President Diem's assassination. To relive that part of history, I would like to direct you to a November 5, 2003 post of John Prados, tittled JFK and the Diem Coup [http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm]:

«...[O]n May 8 [1963], ... South Vietnamese security forces acting under the orders of one of Ngo Dinh Diem's brothers, fired into a crowd of Buddhist religious marchers celebrating the Buddha's 2,527th birthday.

The rationale for the breakup of this march was no more serious than that the Buddhists had ignored a government edict against flying flags other than the South Vietnamese state flag. Another of Diem's brothers, the Roman Catholic archbishop for this same area of South Vietnam had flown [catholic] flags with impunity just weeks before when celebrating his own promotion within the Church; the Buddhists may have been encouraged by that act to think their own actions would be permitted as well.

Suppression of this Buddhist march in the ancient Vietnamese imperial capital of Hue led to a political crisis, the "Buddhist crisis," that ignited Saigon throughout the summer and fall of 1963.

The two brothers of Diem implicated in the Hue suppression were not even the Saigon leader's main problem. Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu sat in the presidential palace as private counselor, manipulator, emissary, and puppetmaster of the Saigon government. Even more than Diem himself Nhu [and his Lady Macbeth, the infamous Madame Nhu] was regarded widely in South Vietnam as a menace, directing Diem's political party, some of his intelligence services, and Special Forces created under one of the American-sponsored aid programs. Nhu took a very negative view of the Buddhist troubles. President Diem's response to the Buddhist crisis, once he passed beyond denying that anything was happening, was to promise political and religious reforms, and negotiations for a modus vivendi with the Buddhists were carried out in Saigon. Nhu, however, encouraged the South Vietnamese leader to renege on the agreement and, once again, Diem failed to enact any of the political concessions that had been agreed.

Buddhist religious demonstrations came to Saigon in late May and soon became almost daily events. On June 11 the protests attained a new level of intensity after a bonze publicly immolated himself at a busy Saigon street intersection as the climax of a demonstration. Photographs of the scene startled the world, and made the Buddhist troubles a political issue in the United States for President Kennedy, who faced a tough problem in continuing economic and military aid to a government so clearly violating the human rights of its people. The CIA put out an addendum to its previous national intelligence estimate revising its assessment of Diem's political prospects, and State Department intelligence circulated a report predicting major trouble in Saigon.

President Diem's worsening situation led him to declare martial law in August 1963, and on August 21 Ngo Dinh Nhu used the martial law authority to carry out major raids on the largest pagodas of the Buddhist group behind the protests. Nhu conducted the raids in such a way as to suggest that South Vietnamese military commanders were behind them, and used troops funded by the United States through the CIA to carry out the raids. Within days of the raids, South Vietnamese military officers were approaching Americans to inquire as to what the U.S. response might be to a military coup in Saigon.

This situation forms the background to the selection of documents included in this briefing book. The documents frame those meetings and major instructions in which President Kennedy was directly involved in considerations of a coup in Saigon. There were two main periods during which these deliberations took place, August and October 1963. The first sequence followed quickly on the pagoda raids, the second occurred once the South Vietnamese generals initiated a new round of coup preparations. The documents here consist primarily of records of meetings or key cabled instructions or reports pertinent to the coup, which would eventually take place on November 1, 1963.»

I remember the day when Thich Quang Duc immolated himself. He did it at a market place near our home. The smell of burned flesh was everywhere. Alerted by the screams and the roar of the crowd, I ran out with other members of my household, following the horrible smell. When I arrived at the scene, they have already smothered the flames and removed the monk's body. «Công an» agents (undercover security goons) were trying to push people away. The crowd around me was in turmoil, women were screaming and sobbing wildly. I could see the place of the sacrifice still smoking, with people prosternating and crying in front of the empty blackened spot. The next day, the newspapers would print on the front page the cruel comments of Madame Nhu: «So, a monk has barbecued himself. Big deal!»

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Ngo_Dinh_Nhu

Explanation of Thich Quang Duc's gesture by Thich Nhat Hanh: http://www.buddhistinformation.com/self_immolation.htm

With his self-immolation, the monk's body was completely consumed, leaving only his heart among the ashes. Even after a later cremation, the heart remained intact and is now revered as «xa loi» (holy relic). See http://www.quangduc.com/BoTatQuangDuc/25photo.html