Monk who brought down a president
Vietnam War protests made headlines
Thich Tri Quang, a Buddhist monk who wielded formidable political power during the Vietnam War, leading waves of protests that brought down South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and later contributed to growing American ambivalence about the war, died Nov. 8 in Hue. He was 95.
During a critical phase of the Vietnam War, from 1963 to 1966, Tri Quang commanded headlines as a figure of international intrigue.
Part of the fascination surrounding Tri Quang — Thich is a religious title, akin to “the Reverend” in English — stemmed from what to Western observers seemed the contradictory nature of his objectives. He was described as the great champion of Vietnam’s Buddhist majority, and a radical sowing political dissent in a tortured land. He was called a communist, at other times an anti-communist.
Tri Quang was born Dec. 21, 1923, and became a monk at age 12 or 13, a practice not unusual in Vietnam. Time reported that his pagoda in Hue expelled him over his penchant for practical jokes but later readmitted him.
Tri Quang fought French colonial rule, which ended in 1954, and the division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel.
In 1963 he led protests that ended in the ouster of Diem, the first president of South Vietnam, in a U.S.backed coup. Diem was Catholic, and for the protesters and Tri Quang, Buddhism and national identity went hand in hand.
On May 8, 1963, South Vietnamese soldiers fired on a group of Buddhists flying a Buddhist flag in Hue, killing nine people. Protests culminated with the ritual suicide a month later of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who was soaked with gasoline and then sat lotus style as he burned to death on a Saigon street.
That pushed President John F. Kennedy to reconsider support for Diem, who was ultimately assassinated in the coup.
Tri Quang then helped overthrow a succession of governments and their Diem holdovers. At that point the U.S. government began to look on him more skeptically.
Tri Quang’s protests continued in 1966 during the government of Nguyen Cao Ky.
Little was known about Tri Quang’s activities after the end of the war.