Myles B. Kantor
Friday, Sept. 13, 2002

This month marks so much death. There is the most immediate death of Sept. 11; there is the similarly motivated death at the Munich Olympics on Sept. 5, 1972; and there is the relatively unknown death of Ho Tan Anh.

On Sept. 2, 2001, this 61-year-old Vietnamese Buddhist immolated himself in Danang. What brought Ho Tan Anh to this?

Sept. 2 is Communist Vietnam's National Day, originating in Ho Chi Minh's declaration of independence from France on Sept. 2, 1945. After France withdrew in 1954, Ho Stalinized his northern dominion and pursued South Vietnam's conquest.

Robert Kennedy observed in 1967, "There is nothing we would recognize as freedom in North Vietnam today," noting that Ho's "'land reform' program of 1954-1955 was a forced collectivization … so brutally carried out that the peasant rebellion that it caused could be suppressed by Ho's army only at the cost of over 100,000 lives."

Ho died in 1969, but his hegemonic objective materialized in April 1975 when northern forces "unified" Vietnam with Soviet-made tanks. South Vietnam ceased to exist, and its capital of Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City.

"I still shiver when I think about the hundreds of camps set up along Stalinist lines after 1975," recalls Bui Tin, a North Vietnamese colonel and former high-ranking functionary.

In good Soviet fashion, the Hanoi regime terrorized religious Vietnamese. Buddhists, Vietnam's largest religious group, suffered severely after "unification," many being sent to "re-education" camps.

To co-opt Buddhism, Hanoi created the Vietnamese Buddhist Church (VBC) in 1981. Members of the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), founded in 1964, denied the legitimacy of the VBC. Hanoi reacted by crushing the UBCV's leaders and expropriating its headquarters.

Persecution of the UBCV continues today. After a closed trial in September 2000, for instance, five Buddhists were convicted of "defaming the government and abusing democracy." Nguyen Chau Lang and Truong Van Thuc received sentences of three years; Le Van Nhuom two years; and Tran Van Be Cao and Tran Nguyen Huon one year.

Given Vietnam's totalitarianism, a conscientious Buddhist is a criminal. Article 4 of Vietnam's "constitution" states:

The Communist Party of Vietnam, the vanguard of the Vietnamese working class, the faithful representative of the rights and interests of the working class, the toiling people, and the whole nation, acting upon the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and Ho Chi Minh's thought, is the force leading the State and society.

Before immolating himself, Ho Tan Anh sent letters to the United Nations, President Bush and other world leaders. A member of the UBCV and leader in the Buddhist Youth Movement, Anh described the regime's threats against him:

If you do not listen to us we will kill you as we did with Thich Thien Minh [a Buddhist monk tortured to death in 1979]. Or we will keep you in prison until you die. This is a dictatorship and we can do what we want. Even if the United Nations Secretary General himself were to come here he could do nothing for you. If you do not mend your ways, we will take harsh measures against you.

If Americans remember any Buddhist martyrs, they most likely remember Thich Quang Duc. On June 11, 1963, this monk immolated himself in Saigon to protest Ngo Dinh Diem's persecution of Buddhists. Television cameras and photographer Malcolm Browne recorded the act.

No news crews or photographers recorded Ho Tan Anh's martyrdom. It still occurred, however, hoping the world will take note.

Contact Myles Kantor at kantor@FreeEmigration.com

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