Buddhist Uprising

The Buddhist Uprising of 1966 (Vietnamese: Nổi dậy Phật giáo 1966), or more widely known in Vietnam as the Crisis in Central Vietnam (Biến động Miền Trung), was a period of civil and military unrest in South Vietnam, mostly in the I Corps area in the north of the country in central Vietnam. The area is a center of Vietnamese Buddhism, and at the time, activist Buddhist monks and civilians were at the forefront of opposition to a series of military juntas that had been ruling the nation, as well as prominently questioning the escalation of the Vietnam War. During the rule of the Catholic Ngô Đình Diệm, the perceived discrimination against the Buddhist population generated the growth of Buddhist institutions as they sought to participate in national politics and gain better treatment. In 1965, after a series of military coups that followed the fall of the Diệm regime in 1963, Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu finally established a stable junta, holding the positions of Prime Minister and figurehead Chief of State respectively. The Kỳ-Thiệu regime was initially almost a feudal system, being more of an alliance of warlords than a state as each corps commander ruled his area as his own fiefdom, handing some of the taxes they collected over to the government in Saigon and keeping the rest for themselves. During that time, suspicion and tension continued between the Buddhist and Catholic factions in Vietnamese society. The religious factor combined with a power struggle between Kỳ and General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, the commander of I Corps, a Buddhist local to the region and popular in the area. Thi was a strong-willed officer regarded as a capable commander, and Kỳ saw him as a threat, as did others within the junta. In February 1966,...