Each of us must share the responsibility of our common woes

In the past few months there has been a great deal of talk about the virtues of democracy. For a country which can ill afford the luxury of playing at politics, the time and energy expended on acrimonious public debate on the meaning of democracy (which, of course, a democratic state is in principle obliged not merely to permit but to encourage) would be wholly unjustified if, from analysis and criticism, from the partisan espousal of conflicting interpretations some basic concepts, accepted and re-affirmed by all our warring factions, do not emerge.

It has always been politically expedient in our country to demand the rights and privileges which accrue from membership of a democratic society; but I have seldom, or only too infrequently, heard our political leaders emphasize the unpalatable truth that every adult citizen owes a duty to the State and his fellowmen to share the onerous burdens and responsibilities of involvement in the democratic process.

Many of us, alas - and I point the accusing finger at myself first - have been content merely to perform periodically our allotted task as electors and then, having placed in the seats of power one political party or another, to resume the comfortable role of armchair critics immune from criticism and devoid of responsibility which by a convenient fiction we have persuaded ourselves to believe is the traditional role of the voter in a democratic society.

When the country’s affairs are in a tangled mess, when problems arise to which no ready solution is forthcoming how much easier it is to lay the blame on someone else - on politicians, on some mystical entity known contemptuously as the “common man” (forgetting that we are all common men) - rather than accept ourselves; some share of responsibility for our common woes.

If politicians - who as a breed of men are often most unfairly maligned by those of us who are unwilling or unable to undertake the crushing burdens of elected office - grasp eagerly at the proffered role of exclusive leadership in a democratic society it is because the people of our country have jointly and individually abdicated their function of active participants in the democratic process.

I do not suggest that it is open to every citizen to - or even desirable that he should - engage in bitter party strife but surely there is, or should be, an area of common ground on every front of national activity removed from the heat and noise of debate which men from every walk of life could unite to explore.
It will be said that these are merely pretty words doomed to fall on deaf ears because the world is mean and selfish, that in a complex modern society there is no place for the individual except within the barriers of race or creed or class or party, that men are sheep born to be driven.

Indeed, men will be sheep when they are shorn of their ideals and to those self-appointed shepherds who, divining perhaps amongst the people a deep hunger for resolute leadership, urge from time to time the merits of dictatorship there will be no answer unless, aware of our individual responsibilities, we resolve, each in his own way, to make our contribution to the success of democracy.

I would have succumbed to a cynical disbelief in the humanity of man had I not learnt at first hand - what I am sure many of you have seen for yourselves - that humble men in many places have in an hour of crisis exhibited qualities of leadership of which we can all be justly proud.

At the end of 1963, I went to South Vietnam, a country then as now torn by war and paralyzed by internal dissension, to study the religious problem which is alleged to have contributed towards the fall of Diem. Among many others, I had the privilege of meeting two heroic men who are relatively unknown outside their country. One was Father Luan, a Catholic Priest who was the Rector of the predominantly Buddhist University of Hue, and the other was Dr. Quyen, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hue, Editor of a Buddhist Review and the leading lay Buddhist in Hue.

Father Luan who was a close personal friend of Diem openly revolted against the Dictator when he was convinced that he was completely beyond persuasion. He personally led the Buddhist students in a procession along the streets of Hue to pray at the Tu Dam Pagoda in calculated defiance of Diem's orders for which he paid the penalty of being arrested. When he returned to the University after Diem's fall, he was received with acclamation by a grateful city.

I asked the Monks of the Tu Dam Pagoda what they thought of Fr. Luan and their spokesman the Venerable Thing Chan Truc, who was the Monk in charge of the administration of Buddhist Associations for sixteen provinces said: “We admire Fr. Luan very much. He led his students to this Pagoda to pray during our struggle. We consider him as our leader."Fr. Luan was full of praise for his Buddhist colleagues of whom he said:

"The Buddhist leaders of Vietnam are wise and tolerant men. It will be difficult anywhere to find men of such charity and compassion."

Dr. Quyen is a humble, self-effacing man, a scholar of repute, who lives quietly and frugally in a back street in Hue. He was arrested in August 1963 (presumably as a dangerous liberal) and thrown into prison where he spent the next 2 1/2 months in solitary confinement.

For 21 successive nights he was interrogated from dusk to dawn with a bright light shining in his face but worse he was condemned to death without a trial and his execution had been fixed for November 6th 1963 which meant that if Diem’s over throw had been delayed by a few days Dr. Quyen would have been no more.

It was difficult enough to extract this information from him as he was most reluctant to talk about the past I pressed him for his reaction to the dire fate which almost overtook him and his reply is memorable, he scratched his head and said:

“You know, if I had died, I would not have known the crime for which I had given up my life.”
That was all that appeared to worry him. It was a problem unresolved: something that disturbed his tidy mind.

Two nights after his release from prison, a large group of students many of whom had been imprisoned and tortured by the previous regime surrounded the residence of Ngo Dinh Can, brother of Diem who was the Overlord of Hue. The students were in an ugly mod and the young Provost of the University feared that there would be serious violence, the rector had not yet returned to the University and there was apparently nobody on hand who could have calmed the inflamed crowd.

The Provost telephoned Dr. Quyen and asked him to come down immediately. The little Doctor drove down to the scene and was greeted with a storm of applause by the students who adored him. I am told that he spoke calmly and soberly and made one telling point. He told the students that personal and religious freedom had been restored to their country and that those who wanted to fight the regime should have fought it openly at the height of its power.

It was cowardly to attack a wretched man like Can who no longer wielded any power or influence. It would appear that the students dispersed quietly, perhaps ashamed of themselves, in the light of what Dr. Quyen, who had suffered so much had said.

These men were not politicians and yet they contributed immeasurably towards preventing a greater holocaust than the one from which their country had been rescued. But their call for sanity at that critical hour would have gone unheeded unless in their daily lives they had inspired the confidence and the affection of all those with whom they came into contact.

When the intense drama of those days was over each of them returned to the chores of University life. They went back to their books but they will continue, I am sure, to exercise the leadership and assume the responsibilities which their positions in life have thrust upon them. They have shown that once men unite across the divide of belief and allegiance no tyranny can survive.

Mr. President, if there are men of such calibre in a neighbouring land surely there are such men who dwell amongst us now.

Concluding part of the Amnesty International Report on the religious problem in South Vietnam that Lakshman Kadirgamar wrote in 1963

I would not have been surprised to find nothing but bitterness and hatred between the Catholic and Buddhist peoples of South Vietnam. It would have been natural perhaps to find the desire for vengeance in the aftermath of liberation. But I found none of this. Everywhere there was reluctance to speak of the past -and not because the people had any fear of exposure or punishment in a country which has now been freed from the brutality of the Diem regime.

The press, after years of censorship, is at last free to publish what it likes, to express all its pent-up emotion. But I found that the press has deliberately eschewed sensationalism. While the pressmen will tell you that they have heard many salacious stories about the private life of Madame Nhu they have not the slightest interest in publishing them and there is a tacit understanding among the newspapers not to print pictures showing the cruelty of the Diem regime.

Young students freed again after months of imprisonment and torture might have been expected to run wild. But I found them quiet and sober, suddenly mature perhaps, and it was difficult to extract from them the details of atrocities perpetrated by the former regime. They kept saying that the past is best forgotten, that there is no point in dwelling on the misery of the last six months. They were concerned only with the future.

I met leading monks, professors, teachers, students, professional people, men and women, young and old and not one single person was keen to glory in his or her martyrdom. After a day or two I began to feel ashamed of my own inquisitiveness for details. I began to feel that a mere chronicle of events could never sufficiently reveal the true nature of the struggle of the Vietnamese people for their rights and liberties. I began to see that here was a human story unparalleled in my own experience and in many ways unique. The world has seen from time to time that ordinary men and women are capable of supreme heroism in times of war, that loyalty to each other and self-sacrifice are human qualities that are exhibited in unexpected quarters in times of crisis. But I venture to think that seldom if ever has a whole people shown such understanding and compassion in their hour of victory.

Political and religious extremists in Ceylon sought to create the impression that a religious war between the Buddhists and Catholics was fought in Vietnam. I did not find a shred of evidence to support this thesis. The ferment of political and religious movements in Asia today is such that I would not have been in the least surprised, indeed I expected, to find that the struggle of the Buddhist people of South Vietnam for their rights had been exploited for the achievement of ulterior purposes. But during the entirety of the campaign waged by the Buddhists there was never at any stage in any form whatsoever the manifestation of an intention to repress or persecute the adherents of any other religious faith. What appeared to me to be almost miraculous is that the mass of the people who were engaged in this struggle and who suffered for their cause were able always to define their goals with scrupulous objectivity.

Their fight was against the Diem regime, against the personal autocracy of a powerful family. Their fight was for the elevation of the Buddhist faith, not the denigration of any other peoples or faiths. During the campaign for liberation not one anti-Catholic slogan was raised or published by the Buddhist leaders. I was not told, and I did not come to hear, of a single incident involving Buddhists and Catholics. The truth appears to be that the majority of the Catholic and Buddhist people stood together, united against tyranny, and that their respective leaders worked in harmony for the common cause. With the exception of Archbishop Thuc, the notorious brother of Diem, and his small coterie of followers who, judged by any standards would be a disgrace to their faith and their people, there were (to quote what General Minh told me) 'many gestures of sympathy from the Catholics towards the Buddhists. The messages of Pope Paul VI to the Vietnamese people and the two pastoral letters of the Archbishop of Saigon, Monsignor Nguyen Van Binh are the most important manifestations of their sympathy.'

The Venerable Thich Duc Nghiep of the Xa Loi pagoda, spokesman for the Inter-Sect Committee which was established during the campaign to co-ordinate the activities of the various Sects, told me: 'The Buddhist protest was against Diem's regime and family. There was no ill-feeling against our Catholic brothers. They showed sympathy with us.' The Venerable Nghiep spent seventy-two days in gaol. I was told by students that he had been severely tortured, but although I met him on two occasions and urged him to speak about the past he steadfastly refused. He said in his flawless English that 'the last few months were a nightmare. It is past; there is no necessity to speak about it now.' As this incredible picture unfolded I asked myself often how it was that ordinary people with the failings and weaknesses and passions that all human beings are heir to could have behaved en masse in such a splendid manner.

The young Provost of the University of HuC gave me one answer. He said that in their hour of trial they were richly blessed with leaders both Buddhist and Catholic who were men of vision and tolerance, always concerned to offer to their followers by word and example the best advice and counsel in the interest of their cause and the unity of their country. The Venerable Thich Tam Chau -Chairman of the Inter-Sect Committee for the Defence of Buddhism in South Vietnam, the monk who along with the Venerable Thich Khiet and the Venerable Thich Tri Quang successfully led and organized the Buddhist revolt against Diem and paved the way for his downfall -has now retired to the peace and quiet of his tiny little room in a wing of the Xa Loi pagoda where he sleeps on a plank bed.

He is a gentle man utterly devoid of vanity or arrogance, uncorrupted by the devotion which he has inspired among his followers. I had to see him twice with great difficulty because he shuns visitors and it was with the utmost reluctance that he finally consented to pose for a photograph. The monks of the Tu Dam pagoda in Hue and the Xa Loi pagoda and other pagodas in Saigon who were imprisoned and tortured for over two months had nothing but compassion and mercy for their tormentors. To all those heroic men and women, to Dr Quyen, Fr Luan and the many students who will forever remain anonymous, I would like to pay my own humble tribute. I feel that the memory of their achievements cannot be allowed to fade without it being brought to the notice of the world that men of such calibre and integrity are still amongst us. They have shown that once men and women unite across the divide of belief and allegiance no tyranny can survive.

Related Article:

For full text of Kadirgamar report to Amnesty International.