Word: vietnamization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...contend with communist obstruction. Originally, the Grand Requiem ceremonies were to be billed in Vietnamese as the "Grand Requiem for Praying Equally for All to Untie the Knots of Unjust Suffering." But Vietnamese officials objected, saying it was improper to "equally" pray for soldiers in the U.S.-backed South Vietnam army, not to mention American soldiers. "The spirit of the Vietnamese people doesn't agree with the idea of praying for foreign imperialists coming to kill millions of Vietnamese," says Bui Huu Duoc, director of the government's Religious Affairs Committee for Buddhism. So Nhat Hanh agreed to change...
...banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam sees Nhat Hanh's pilgrimage as betrayal, not breakthrough. The UBCV's two top officials, Thich Huyen Quang, and Thich Quang Do ("Thich" is an honorific held by most Vietnamese monks) have been under house arrest in their respective monasteries due to their pro-democracy stance and opposition to strict government control of religion, which was established after the communists won the war in 1975. A spokesman for the outlawed sect said he is "shocked" that Nhat Hanh is willing to work with his co-religionists' oppressors. "I believe Thich Nhat Hanh's trip...
...controversy pits Vietnam's best-known Buddhists against each other. The Unified Buddhists' patriarch, 87-year-old Thich Huyen Quang, who lives in a monastery in central Vietnam, has been ailing recently, but his deputy, Thich Quang Do, 77, has been a high-profile dissident operating out a monastery in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and proponent of Buddhism free of state control. (An estimated 80% of Vietnam's 84 million people are Buddhist, but after the Vietnam war the Communist Party folded the religion's many sects into one state-controlled church.) Quang Do smuggled his messages...
...Despite the sequestration of the dissident Buddhists, Hanoi's communist leaders have been working hard to dispel the country's reputation for persecuting religion. After the U.S. in 2004 placed Vietnam on its list of "Countries of Particular Concern" for blocking religious freedom (North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China are all on the list), Hanoi passed a new law outlining ways for non-state religions to gain official approval. The next year, it allowed Nhat Hanh to return to Vietnam for the first time in 40 years. Late last year, Washington removed Vietnam from the religious-freedom blacklist...
...fact, Vietnam's clash of Buddhist leaders reflects the country's new religious reality in which ordinary worshipers are enjoying unprecedented freedom. Still, even a hint of political activism is snuffed out. "As long as you play by the rules and are loyal to the regime, they'll leave you alone," says Carl Thayer, a professor and Vietnam expert at Australia's Defence Academy. And if religious leaders focus on fighting each other, the regime must be even more pleased...