South Viet Nam: Monk Without a Cause

The political Buddhists were on the march again in South Viet Nam. Snaking in a two-mile procession through Saigon, militant Thich Tri Quang and some 700 saffron-and-grey-robed monks and nuns, their little paper fans fluttering like butterflies in the noonday sun, trekked to the Presidential Palace. It was Tri Quang's first head-on attack on the South Vietnamese government since Premier Nguyen Cao Ky put down the Buddhist insurrection in Danang and Hué in the spring of 1966. Tri Quang lost that round, and this time his chances seemed even slimmer. Then he was campaigning against the generals and demanding an elected government; now he was confronted by an elected government.

In an unusual confrontation, President-elect Nguyen Van Thieu, flanked by Ky and their aides, decided to come out of the palace and meet the monk. Loudspeakers broadcast a curbside debate between Thieu and Tri Quang to several thousand Vietnamese who gathered to watch, smiling and drinking soda pop. The militant Buddhists were angry because Thieu had approved Moderate Buddhist Thich Tarn Chan as the official spokesman for Viet Nam's United Buddhist Church, a loose association to which most of the nation's Buddhist sects belong. It is a position of influence that Tri Quang coveted for himself and the militants, and he told Thieu that Tarn Chau had "betrayed" the church by siding with the government. If Thieu did not withdraw Tarn Chau's primacy, Tri Quang warned, the government might as well "prepare the sandbags" for war in the streets with his bonzes.

Vitamins for the Vigil. Thieu was measured and conciliatory in his reply, offering to bring Tarn Chau and Tri Quang together to mediate what the government regarded as an internal Buddhist quarrel. But Tri Quang refused to meet with Tarn Chau under any conditions created by the government. Instead, dismissing his followers, he settled his robes for an indefinite protest vigil underneath a tree in front of the palace. Each night followers brought fresh changes of robes and food, tea, milk, vitamins, dextrose mixed with water and aspirin. The palace guards permitted Tri Quang to use their gate toilet, and when the monsoon came, South Vietnamese Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan came out and invited Tri Quang inside, holding an umbrella for him.

The great bulk of the capital's population was clearly unmoved by the militants' cause. The monks made a great to-do about the recommendation of the special elections committee that the national election be invalidated for irregularities, but another committee had already dismissed the charges and the Provisional Legislative Assembly is almost certain to approve the election results. Protesting the results anyway, some 300 students began smearing a large election sign with paint. Police quickly drove them away with swinging clubs, and the students marched off to Independence Square to commiserate with Tri Quang. In the busy Saigon streets along the way, they accumulated almost no camp followers.