Ngo Dinh Nhu - Buddhist Crisis

Buddhist Crisis

In May 1963, the Buddhist crisis broke out after nine Buddhist protestors were killed in Huế while protesting a ban on the Buddhist flag on Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. This prompted the Buddhist majority to stage widespread demonstrations against Diệm, who discriminated in favour of Catholics, for religious equality. The movement threatened the stability of the family's rule. Nhu was known to favor a stronger line against the Buddhists. He had made statements calling for the suppression of the protests through his English language newspaper, the Times of Vietnam. During this time, his wife Madame Nhu, herself a Catholic convert from Buddhism and the de facto first lady (due to Diệm's bachelor life), inflamed the situation by mockingly applauding the suicides of Thích Quảng Đức and others, referring to them as "barbecues", while Nhu stated "if the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I will be glad to supply the gasoline".

7 July was the ninth anniversary of Diệm's 1954 ascension to Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam. American pressmen had been alerted to a Buddhist demonstration to coincide with Double Seven Day at the Chanatareansey pagoda in northern Saigon. When the Buddhists filed out of the pagoda into an adjacent alley, they were blocked by Nhu's secret police. When Peter Arnett and Malcolm Browne began taking photos, the police punched Arnett in the nose, floored him, threw rocks and broke his camera. Browne took photos of Arnett's bloodied face, and while the police smashed his camera, the film survived. Photos of Arnett's bloodied face were circulated in US newspapers and caused further embarrassment for Diệm and Nhu. The Saigon press corps officially protest Nhu's "open physical intimidation to prevent the covering of news which we feel Americans have a right to know".

There were persistent reports that Nhu was seeking to usurp real power from Diệm and would attack the Buddhists. In a media interview, Nhu said that if the Buddhist crisis was not resolved, he would stage a coup, quickly demolish the Xá Lợi pagoda, where the Buddhists were massing to coordinate their activities, and head a new anti-Buddhist government. The news was promptly published, although the Americans were not sure if Nhu was serious.

On the evening of 18 August, a group of senior ARVN generals met to discuss the Buddhist crisis and decided that the imposition of martial law was needed to disperse the monks who had gathered in Saigon and other regional cities and return them to their original pagodas in the rural areas. On 20 August they met Nhu for consultations and made their request. Most of the group were already involved in plotting against the Ngô family by this time. The generals played on Nhu's prejudices by saying that the pagodas were infiltrated with communists and that they needed to be dispersed. Hearing this, the brothers agreed to declare martial law effective on the next day, without consulting the cabinet. The real purpose of the generals' request was to maneuver troops in readiness for a coup, and they had no concrete plans to use the regular army to raid the pagodas. However, Nhu took the opportunity to discredit the army by using Tung's Special Forces and the combat police to attack the pagodas.

With the approval of Diệm, Nhu used the declaration of martial law to order armed men into the Buddhist pagodas. Nhu purposely chose a time when the U.S. Embassy was leaderless. Frederick Nolting had returned to he United States and his successor Lodge was yet to arrive. As the high command of the ARVN worked closely with the American advisers, Nhu used the combat police and Tung's Special Forces, who took his orders directly from Nhu. The men were dressed in regular army uniforms, such as paratrooper uniforms, in order to frame the army for the raids. Nhu's motive was to shift the responsibility for a violent operation that would anger the Vietnamese public and the American officials onto the army. In doing so, he intended to dent the public and American confidence in the senior army officers, who were plotting against him. Nhu hoped the Buddhist majority and the Americans would blame the army for the raids and become less inclined to support a coup by the generals. In the past, Nhu's Machiavellian tactics in playing the generals against one another had kept conspirators off-balance and thwarted coup attempts.

Squads of Special Forces and combat police flattened the gates of the Xá Lợi pagoda and smashed their way in at around 00:20, 21 August 1963. Nhu's men were armed with pistols, submachine guns, carbines, shotguns, grenades and tear gas. The red bereted Special Forces were joined by truckloads of steel-helmeted combat police in army camouflage uniforms. Two of Nhu's senior aides were seen outside Xá Lợi directing the operation. Monks and nuns were attacked with rifle butts and bayonets, and overpowered by automatic weapons fire, grenades and battering rams. It took around two hours to complete the raids because many of the occupants had barricaded themselves inside the various rooms.

Nhu's men vandalized the main altar and confiscated the intact charred heart of Thích Quảng Đức, the monk who had self-immolated in protest against the policies of the regime. However, some of the Buddhists were able to flee the pagoda with a receptacle with the remainder of his ashes. Two monks jumped the back wall of the pagoda into the grounds of the adjoining United States Agency for International Development (USAID) mission, where they were given asylum. Thich Tinh Khiet, an eighty year old Buddhist patriarch, was seized and taken to a military hospital on the outskirts of Saigon. Military control, press censorship and the airport closures were enacted in Saigon.

The violence was worse in heavily Buddhist Huế. Pro-Buddhist civilians left their homes upon hearing of the raids to defend the city's pagodas. At Từ Đàm Pagoda, which was the temple of Buddhist protest leader Thích Trí Quang, government soldiers, firing M1 rifles, overran the building and demolished a statue of Gautama Buddha and looted and vandalized the building, before leveling much of the pagoda with explosives. Many Buddhists were shot or clubbed to death. The most determined resistance occurred outside the Diệu Đế Pagoda in Huế. As troops attempted to erect a barricade across the bridge leading to the pagoda, the crowd fought back, and the military finally took control after five hours, leaving an estimated 30 dead and 200 wounded.

Some 500 people were arrested in the city, and 17 of the 47 professors at Huế University, who had resigned earlier in the week in protest against the family's policies, were arrested. The raids were repeated in cities and towns across the country. The total number of dead and disappeared was never confirmed, but estimates range up to several hundred. At least 1,400 were arrested. No further mass Buddhist protests occurred during the remainder of Diệm's rule, which would amount to little more than two more months, in any event.

Government sources claimed that at the Xá Lợi, Ấn Quang and other pagodas, soldiers had found machine guns, ammunition, plastic explosives, homemade mines, daggers, and Vietcong documents; these had been planted by Nhu's men. A few days later, Madame Nhu said that the raids were "the happiest day in my life since we crushed the Binh Xuyên in 1955", and assailed the Buddhists as "communists". Nhu accused the Buddhists of turning their pagodas into headquarters for plotting insurrections. He claimed the Buddhist Intersect Committee operated under the control of "political speculators who exploited religion and terrorism".

Nhu's actions prompted riots from university students, which were met by arrests, imprisonment, and university shutdowns. The high school students followed suit, and followed their university counterparts into jail. Thousands of students from Saigon's leading high school, most of them children of public servants and military officers, were sent to re-education camps. The result was a further drop in morale amongst the putative defenders of the Ngô family. In a media interview, Nhu vowed to kill his father-in-law (for publicly renouncing him), saying: "I will have his head cut off. I will hang him in the center of a square and let him dangle there. My wife will make the knot on the rope because she is proud of being a Vietnamese and she is a good patriot." In the same interview, Nhu claimed to have invented helicopters and pioneered their use in military combat.

On 24 August, the Kennedy administration sent Cable 243 to Lodge in Saigon, marking a change in American policy. The message advised Lodge to seek the removal of the Nhus from power, and to look for alternative leadership options if Diệm refused to remove them. As the probability of Diệm doing so was seen as highly unlikely, the message effectively meant the fomenting of a coup. Lodge replied that there was no hope of Diệm removing Nhu, and began to make contact with possible coup plotters through CIA agents. The Voice of America broadcast a statement blaming Nhu for the pagoda raids and absolving the army of culpability. Lodge believed Nhu's influence had risen to unprecedented levels and that Nhu's divide and conquer tactics had split the military into three power groups.

See also: Krulak Mendenhall mission and McNamara Taylor mission

One of the recommendations of the Krulak Mendenhall mission, was to stop American funding for the Motion Picture Center, which produced hagiographic films (propaganda) about the Nhus. and to pursue covert actions aimed at dividing and discrediting Tung and Major General Tôn Thất Đính. Đính was the youngest general in ARVN history, primarily due to his loyalty to the Ngô family. He was given command of the III Corps forces surrounding the capital as he and Tung were the most trusted officers and could be relied upon to defend the family against any coup.

The McNamara Taylor mission resulted in the suspension of funding for Nhu's special forces until they were placed under the command of the army's Joint General Staff (JGS) and sent into battle. The report noted that one of the reasons for sending Tung's men into the field was because they "are a continuing support for Diệm". The Americans were also aware that removing the special forces from Saigon would increase the chances that a coup attempt would succeed, thereby encouraging the army to overthrow the president. Diệm and Nhu were undeterred by suspension of aid, keeping Tung and his men in the capital. Nhu accused the Americans of "destroying the psychology of our country" and called the U.S. ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a "man of no morality".

At Nhu's request, Tung was reported to have been planning an operation under the cover of a government-organised student demonstration outside the U.S. embassy. In this plan, Tung's men would assassinate Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and other key officials among the confusion. Another target was the Buddhist leader Thích Trí Quang, who had been given asylum in the embassy after being targeted in the pagoda raids. According to the plan, Tung's men would then burn down the embassy and stage it as a riot provoked by communists and other enemies of the United States.

Another notable instance of religious warfare was perpetrated by Nhu's right-hand man in 1963. A hugely oversized carp was found swimming in a small pond near Đà Nẵng. Local Buddhists began to believe that the fish was a reincarnation of one of Gautama Buddha's disciples. As more people made pilgrimages to the pond, Ngô family officials mined the pond and raked it with machine gun fire, but the fish survived. Nhu's special forces grenaded the pond, finally killing the fish. This backfired, however, because it generated more publicity — newspapers across the world ran stories about the miraculous fish. ARVN helicopters began landing at the site, and paratroopers filled their bottles with water they believed to be magical.