Maj. Gen. Tran Van-Don writes in Our Endless War: Inside Vietnam (Presido Press, USA:1978), on pp.69-72,:
But, of all errors perpetrated by the Ngo family, the most serious were those pertaining to the Buddhists. This was reported widely by the press, both in Vietnam and abroad.
Considering our tradition of tolerance in religious belief, the abuses perpetrated by the Ngo family are that much more difficult to understand. This adventure in which they were recklessly involved was loaded with risks and possible repercussions. They were attacking a religious group that comprised about 80 percent of the population of the country.
The Buddhists' feelings of distress did not come from problems they were having with their Catholic neighbors. Instead, Buddhist leaders began to get more and more upset about the various injustices perpetrated by the Diem regime on all the people of South Vietnam. Younger Buddhist bonzes picked up the struggle against all forms of oppression and injustice and many malcontents were attracted to militant bonzes like the Venerable Thich Tri Quang. They saw the Buddhist confessional organization as a force capable of resisting government pressures and suddenly the Buddhist faith became a political ally of those anti-Communists who opposed policies of the Diem government. They were able to convert thousands of people who formerly were mild Buddhists or simply sympathetic to that religion. Considerable moral as well as financial support accrued to the Institute of Teaching of the Buddhist Doctrine and to the pagodas, which became centers of resistance against government policy. Various disparate elements rallied to the Buddhist cause: high-school and college youths, professional men, members of the press, disappointed politicians, and parliamentarians belonging to the opposition parties.
As with many struggles, a single simple event brought the Buddhist crisis to the attention of the whole world. This had to do with flying of the Buddhist flag. A presidental decree, issued in April 1963, specified that on the occasion of religious holidays the national flag must be hoisted above any religious material displayed.
The first such event occurring after this decree was the pompous celebration organized for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the espicopal ordination of Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, brother of the president. During this ceremony the papal flag was displayed along with the national banner. About one month later the Buddhists celebrated the aniiversary of Buddha's birth. The bonzes decided not to fly their flag in the same way that the Catholics had for Thuc's anniversary, and thus adorned their pagados and homes with Buddhist flags alone.
In the city of Hue, the deputy province chief ordered them to display the national flag above their multicolored Buddhist banner. They refused and to show their solidarity on the principle, they gathered in the streets for a demonstration. The assistant chief of the province, a fervent Catholic, interpreted this attitude as a challenge to the government. Acting under the advice of Archbishop Thuc, he ordered the police and the army to disperse the demonstrators, forcefully if necessary. The operation led to a tragedy, with nine dead and fourteen hospitalized.
There are false versions of the incident. The government, through Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho, attributed this disaster to the explosion of a grenade thrown inside the crowd by the Communists. This was palpably untrue since there were many eye-witnesses and foreign press reporters on hand who took photographs during the entire demonstration.
Despite its sinister aspect, even this issue could have been solved without too much difficulty had not Ngo Dinh Diem adopted an unbending and obstinate posture toward the Buddhists. Since the government offered no real appeasements, Buddhist protests multiplied everywhere. A demonstration organized in Hue on June 3 by various student groups was broken up by police shooting gas grenades. Some sixty-seven people were badly injured in the ensuring fracas. On June 11, an old bonze, the Venerable Thich Quang Duc, sat down in a public street intersection in Saigon, sprinkled his body and clothes with gasoline, and set himself on fire. He died without crying or moving, making the populace react toward him as a martyr. As the imtemperate remarks of "barbecue," by Madame Nhu were reported, this suicide aroused general indignation both in Vietnam and abroad.
To reverse this antigovernment feeling, a joint communique was agreed to by President Diem and the high Buddhist pontiff, Thich Tinh Khiet. This conciliatory steo, however, was immediately overcome by the public accusation of Mt. and Mrs. Nhu that Communists had infiltrated the Buddhist movement and by other derogatory accusations.
Buddhist leaders began hunger strikes and nine other flaming suicides occurred by both male and female bonzes in Saigon and other communities. These further inflamed the local people and brought severe criticism on the government from abroad.
On July 15, the American ambassador, Frederick Nolting, suggested to Diem that he make a radio announcement granting concessions to the Buddhists. Diem simply ignored him. On July 16, I went to see Diem, since I was going to make a trip to Hue myself. I tried to make him understand that the situation in Hue was getting worse through the repressive measures undertaken by the police and army units commandered by Colonel Do Cao Tri, the new commander of the First Division. This highly efficient officer, one of our best military leaders, executed his orders with truly excessive zeal, even using dogs to chase the demonstrators.
In Hue, I found that the pagoda Tu Dam, seat of the Buddhist movement, had been encircled and deprived of water and supplies for several days. The Buddhist people in Hue, however, did their best to help the bonzes who have been cut off from all contact with the outside world, this at the risk of their own lives. I intervened as best I could to alleviate the situation.
Seeing at first hand the suffering of the poor people in the pagoda, I went to see Do Cao Tri and appealed to him as military governor of Hue to relax the oppressive policy which was literally starving the Buddhists. I told him, as Diem's personal envoy, that he had gone too far in using dogs against the demonstrators and in cutting off food to the pagoda. After our conversation, he reversed his policy and allowed food and water to be provided them and opened up the barbed wire encirclind the pagoda.
Returning to Saigon on July 17, I reported to the president what I had seen and heard in Hue. I informed him that the people were very surprised at his total silence since May 8. They could not understand his indifferent attitude since he had always been most solicitous of Hue, his home town. I suggested that he make an announcement, in the language of Hue, worded in the most appeasing manner possible. Ngo Dinh Nhu supported my suggestion by telling Diem that his assistant, Cao Xuan Vy, in the Republican Youth had reported the same things and made the same proposal.
On July 19, Diem made an announcement in the Huen dialect but it was too brief and vague. He promised to solve this incident "like a family matter" and vaguely outlined a reconcialation. If he expected this message to have a soothing effect, it was not realized.
A month later on August 21, Ngo Dinh Nhu ordered a midnight raid on the pagodas of Saigon, Hue, and other coastal province cities. In Saigon, the operations were undertaken by the special forces of the president and by units of the comat police but were blamed by nhu on the regular army which had not participated in the operation.
More than 1,400 bonzes and other Buddhists were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This figure did not include an undetermined number of wounded and missing. Three bonzes, including the Venerable Thich Tri Quang, obtained shelter in the United States Embassy. The break between the government and the Buddhists was then on irrevocable.
This unfortunate attack by Nhu's personal forces caused great discredit on the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. The General Assembly of the United Nations appointed a commission of delegates from seven countries to visit Vietnam and investigate the Buddhist problem. They denounced the attack and other repressive measures as serious blows to the freedom of worship in Vietnam.
Emphasis Mine
Tran Van-Don later planned and carried a coup against President Diem on 1 November 1963. Diem and Nhu were both executed in the coup. On p.89 ibid., he writes:
The violence in the Buddhists' protests came mainly from the government forces who saw the protestors as a threat to the governments. The other violence was done by the protestors to themselves through the flaming suicides.
Both of these protests occurred in the context of an ongoing war. Outside of the suicides, there was no violence coming from the protestors yet the government reacted with violence towards the protestors.
