Vietnam has marked the 40th anniversary of the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc, the monk whose fiery protest came to symbolise the repression of the United States-backed South Vietnamese regime against Buddhism.
The Executive Council of the Vietnamese Buddhist Church (VBC) and local government officials in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, attended Tuesday’s memorial service at the An Quang Pagoda, the southern headquarters of the VBC.
”The self-immolation of the Venerable Thich Quang Duc… touched millions of people, Buddhist nuns, monks and followers, and helped stop the crimes of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime,” the ruling Communist Party’s Nhan Dan newspaper said on Wednesday.
On June 11 1963, Duc, a 67-year-old monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon.
Eyewitness accounts say he got out of a car and assumed the traditional lotus position. Accompanying monks helped him pour gasoline over his body, after which he lit a match. Duc burned to death in a matter of minutes, stoically remaining seated and still.
In letters to members of the Buddhist community and the South Vietnamese government prior to his self-immolation, Duc described his desire to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime.
Photographs of the orange-robed monk in flames set off a worldwide chain of shock and recrimination, leading to the United States-sanctioned overthrow of Diem in November the same year.
Tuesday’s officially sanctioned ceremony was not without irony.
Duc is considered one of the fathers of Vietnam’s dissident Buddhist movement, later known as the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV).
As a result of the church’s refusal to come under the control of the party following the end of the Vietnam War and the country’s reunification in 1975, Hanoi banned it in 1981.
”The party has recognised that Duc struggled for independence and peace and is trying to keep him and his legacy under its revolutionary umbrella,” said Vo Van Ai, director of the International Buddhist Information Bureau in Paris.
Over the past couple of months, the regime appears to have changed tack in its relations with the UBCV.
On May 5, Thich Huyen Quang, its elderly patriarch who has been kept under effective house arrest in the remote central province of Quang Ngai since 1982, was allowed to meet with his deputy, Thich Quang Do, in Ho Chi Minh City for only the third time in 21 years.
Two further meetings followed.
Do was sentenced to two years of ”administrative detention” for launching an ”Appeal for Democracy in Vietnam” in June 2001.
On April 2 Quang held a landmark meeting with Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in Hanoi. ‒ Sapa-AFP