Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, 2006, Excerpt
News agencies never sleep, so it was no surprise that Malcolm Browne, the Associated Press correspondent in
That evening, the monk called several other foreign correspondents with the same message. Only Browne took him seriously. He had written extensively about the spreading Buddhist rebellion and sensed that it would shape
Browne took a place. One of the nuns approached him, and as she poured him tea, he could see tears streaming down her face. A few minutes later, Thich Duc Nghiep caught sight of him and approached. He had a simple question: do not leave “until events have run their course.”
For half an hour Browne sat amid this scene. Suddenly, at a signal, the monks and nuns stopped their chanting, rose, solemnly filed out of the pagoda, and formed a column outside. They assembled behind an old
Three monks emerged from the car, one elderly and the others supporting him. The younger ones placed a square cushion on the pavement in the center of the intersection and helped the older one settle into the archetypal lotus position. As he fingered his oak beads and murmured the sacred words nam mo amita Buddha, “return to Buddha,” they fetched a gasoline tank from the car and splashed a pink gas-and-diesel mixture over him. After they stepped away, he produced a box of matches, lit one, and dropped it into his lap. Instantly he was consumed by fire.
“As the breeze whipped the flames from his face, I could see that although his eyes were closed, his features were contorted with agony. But throughout his ordeal he never uttered a sound or changed his position, even as the smell of burning flesh filled the air. A horrified moan arose from the crowd, and the ragged chanting of some of the monks was interrupted by screams and cries of anguish. Two monks unfurled a large cloth banner reading [in English], “A Buddhist Priest Burns for Buddhist Demands.”
Stunned by what he was seeing, Browne reflexively shot picture after picture. After a few minutes, a fire truck and several police cars with shrieking sirens appeared, but the demonstrators lay in front of them and clung to their wheels so they could not reach the pyre. Soon the flames began to subside. When they died out, several monks appeared with a wooden coffin and tried to lift the dead man’s body into it. His limbs had become rigid. As the coffin was carried back to Xa Loi Pagoda, both arms spilled out. One was still smoking.
Browne’s photos of the burning monk stunned people around the world. The day after they were taken, a visitor to the Oval Office noticed that President John F. Kennedy had a set of them on his desk. They seemed to symbolize the unraveling of
The monk who burned himself to death on the morning of June 11 was named Thich Quang Duc. He was sixty-seven years old, had been a monk for nearly half a century, and was revered as a bodhisattva, a being on the path to enlightenment. In a statement that his comrades attributed to his death, he made a “respectful” plea to Diem to show “charity and compassion” to all religions.
The ruling family’s most outspoken member, Madame Nhu, replied by ridiculing the spectacle of what she called a “barbeque.” “Let them burn,” she said. “We shall clap our hands.”
Over the next few months, these images helped push the Kennedy administration toward a momentous decision. Diem had lost the administration’s confidence and would be overthrown.
