Word: quang
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Hour of the Tiger just before dawn, when Buddhist monks and nuns rise from their pallets to make their first obeisance, a portly, 55-year-old nun named Thich Nu Thanh Quang appeared in front of the Dieu De Pagoda in South Viet Nam's ancient capital of Hue. Removing her wooden-soled sandals, she sat down on the cement. While a Buddhist photographer took pictures, fellow Buddhists reverently emptied the contents of an American five-gallon jerrican of gasoline over her. She struck a safety match, and flames roared 20 feet into the air, until only...
...protesting President Ngo Dinh Diem's anti-Buddhist repressions. At that time the monks were playing on a religious chord that brought a dramatic response in the largely Buddhist nation. This time the immolations were naked political power plays, inspired if not condoned by militant Monk Thich Tri Quang in Hue. While the flames were still flickering over the nun's charred body, Tri Quang summoned the press to make clear his grievance: Premier Ky's successful suppression of the Buddhist-inspired rebellion in nearby Danang, a "crime" against Buddhists equal to the "crime of Hiroshima." Moreover...
...Quang's response to that was another press conference. "If I were an American," he railed, thrusting his jaw forward like an emaciated Mussolini, "I would be ashamed of the President for this statement that the immolations are useless." But in point of fact, unlike 1963 the grisly suicides thus far have proved largely useless in advancing Tri Quang's campaign to topple the Ky government. The reason: the great majority of Vietnamese Buddhist laymen are clearly unconvinced that the immolations are either justified or necessary, and horror has given way to exasperation and even ennui...
...that point, Ky balked. Tri Quang's response at week's end: threat of a complete Buddhist boycott of the September elections unless Ky quits now. Otherwise, he said, "the Americans and their servants would establish a militaristic national assembly." If Tri Quang's usually pear-shaped tones lost some of their resonance, it was because, for all the week's burnt offerings to the Buddhist cause, Premier Ky still had the upper hand in a nation beginning to weary of pointless civil strife amid a genuine, far more deadly battle for national survival against...
...exceptions, notably The New Yorker's Robert Shaplen, 49, the Saigon correspondent most universally respected by both his colleagues and Washington observers. Close behind him in both respect and expertise is the Reporter's Warner. Both have painstakingly documented the myriad activities of Thich Tri Quang as he moves above and below the surface to extend his influence...