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BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION: OTHERS
WAITED IN THE WINGSSOUTH
SOUTH VIETNAM
8/16/63
DEATH VS. THE FAMILY
*
In the sleepy fishing port of Phanthiet, 100 miles
east of Saigon, a Buddhist monk poured gasoline
over his robes, lighted a match and turned himself
into a human pyre. He was the second Buddhist
priest to immolate himself in protest against the
authoritarian regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem and
his family. Waiting in the wings are three more
suicide volunteers, including an aged Buddhist nun.
Diem's sister-in-law, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu, continued
to preach the hard line against the
Buddhists.
SINGAPORE
6/29/59
CHOPHOUSE CHOPIN
*
Since taking over as
Singapore's first Prime Minister, slim Lee Kuan Yew
has shown what he thinks of imperialism's decadent
gifts to Asia. He banned jukeboxes, but later ruled
that they could stay if they stuck to classics like
Beethoven and Chopin. Meanwhile, police have
cleared newsstands of pornography and swooped
through bars, sending B-girls home.
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VIETNAM
11/8/63
DAY OF THE COUP
*
The week in Saigon began and
ended with death. At its start, another Buddhist,
soaked in gasoline, rode up to a crowded square,
struck a spark and went up in flames before anyone
could stop him. At week's end President Ngo Dinh
Diem lay dead alongside his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.
The two men who had fought so long and so
stubbornly -- against Communism, against their
critics, against the Buddhist demonstrators -- had
been consumed by a fire more slowly and carefully
prepared. For months "coup" had been the loudest
whisper heard in South Vietnam. Coup is what
correspondents talked in the bar at the Hotel
Caravelle. Coup is what Diem and his guards feared
in the palace. Coup is what the generals finally
plotted in their headquarters.
RED CHINA
1/27/67
CHAOS
*
Last week Mao Tse-tung's Red
Guards went to Shantung province and wrecked the
birthplace of Confucius. The zealots who desecrated
his shrine at Chu Fu, reported the Peking People's
Daily, had buried Confucianism "once and for all."
In the madness that Red China has become, the act
was highly symbolic. Mao's Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution has all but destroyed the last
vestiges of social order. Defense Minister Lin Piao
admitted via wall posters that "the entire country
is now in a state of civil war."
Violence and disorder continued to
rule. Armed battles between pro- and anti-Maoist
factions roiled the streets of Canton. tass
reported that Red Guards raged through Peking,
sacking and seizing ministries, arresting people at
will and generally adding to the anarchy.
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