Operation Passage To Freedom - Difficulties and Criticism

Difficulties and Criticism

See also: Hue Vesak shootings, Xa Loi Pagoda raids, and Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm

The program had some loose ends that manifested themselves later. Many refugees were not economically integrated and lived from government handouts. Critics noted that the refugees had become a special interest group that fostered resentment. The COMIGAL officials often decided not to split up refugees belonging to the same village, hoping to maintain social continuity. In some cases, Catholic priests refused to obey government directives to settle in certain areas. Many of the refugees also refused to relocate from the camps on the outskirts of the capital, wanting to live an urban lifestyle, and objecting to Diem's desire that they help developed inhospitable frontier territory where disease was more common and the economy less developed. On occasions, the reluctance to disperse away from Saigon resulted in protests outside Diem's residence. Many Catholic villages were effectively transplanted into southern territory. This was efficient in the short run but meant that they would never assimilate into southern society. They had little contact with the Buddhist majority and often held them in contempt, sometimes flying the Vatican flag instead of the national flag. Peter Hansen, an Australian Catholic priest and academic scholar of religion, has added that tensions between northern and southern Catholics were also present, due to issues of regionalism and local traditions. Hansen also said that northern Catholics took a more defensive attitude towards other religions than their southern co-religionists, and were more likely to see non-Catholics as a threat. He further noted that northern Catholics had a more theocratic outlook in that they were more willing to listen to the advice of priests on a wide range of issues, not only spiritual and ecclesiastical matters. These differences and the sense of segregation persist to the current day.

Diem, who had a reputation for heavily favouring Catholics, granted his new constituents a disproportionately high number of government and military posts on religious grounds rather than merit. The disproportionate number of northerners who occupied leadership posts also raised tensions among some regional-minded southerners who regarded them as intruders. He continued the French practice of defining Catholicism as a "religion" and Buddhism as an "association", which restricted their activities. This fostered a social divide between the new arrivals and their compatriots. While on a visit to Saigon in 1955, the British journalist and novelist Graham Greene reported that Diem's religious favouritism "may well leave his tolerant country a legacy of anti-Catholicism". In 1963, simmering discontent over Diem's religious bias exploded into mass civil unrest during the Buddhist crisis. After the Buddhist flag was prohibited from public display for the Vesak celebrations commemorating the birth of Gautama Buddha, Diem's forces opened fire and killed nine protesters. As demonstrations continued through the summer, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces ransacked pagodas across the country, killing hundreds and jailing thousands of Buddhists. The tension culminated in Diem being overthrown and assassinated in a November coup.

The indigenous population in the central highlands complained bitterly about the intrusion of ethnic Catholic Vietnamese onto their land. As a result of their discontent with the southern government, communist propagandists in the highlands found it easier to win them over.