Estoy decorando mi habitación con un conjunto de fotos de diversa índole, tanto deportivas, como históricas, mías, profesionales, amigos… Y en alguna estoy poniendo una explicación debajo. En este caso, es a una de las imágenes mas famosas de la historia, la del monje budista inmolándose en Vietnam del Sur. La explicación la cogí de la wikipedia inglesa, así que está en inglés. Perdon por no traducirlo, pero ultimamente no tengo mucho tiempo precisamente. Si quereis leer el artículo de la wikipedia española está aquí.
Thích Qu?ng ??c (/?t?t? ?kw?? ?d?k/) 1987 – 1963. In a country where surveys of the religious composition at the time estimated the Buddhist majority to be between 70 and 90 percent, President Ngô ?ình Di?m was a member of the Catholic Vietnamese minority. The government was regarded as favoring Roman Catholics for public service and military promotions, as well as in the allocation of land, business arrangements and tax concessions.
Additionally, the distribution of firearms to village self-defense militias saw weapons given only to Roman Catholics, with some Buddhists in the army being denied promotion if they refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. Some Roman Catholic priests ran their own private armies, and there were forced conversions and looting, shelling, and demolition of pagodas in some areas, to which the government turned a blind eye. Roman Catholics were also de facto exempt from the corvée labor that the government obliged all citizens to perform, and U.S. aid was disproportionately distributed to Roman Catholic majority villages by Di?m’s regime. The Roman Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country and enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and land owned by the Roman Catholic Church was exempt from land reform. The white and gold Vatican flag was regularly flown at all major public events in South Vietnam
Buddhist discontent erupted. A large crowd of Buddhists protested against the ban, defying the government by flying Buddhist flags on Vesak and marching on the government broadcasting station. Government forces fired into the crowd of protesters, killing nine people.
On 10 June 1963, Thích Qu?ng ??c arrived as part of a procession that had begun at a nearby pagoda [...]. One placed a cushion on the road while the second opened the trunk and took out a five-gallon gasoline can. As the marchers formed a circle around him, Thích Qu?ng ??c calmly seated himself in the traditional Buddhist meditative lotus position on the cushion. His colleague emptied the contents of the gasoline container over Thích Qu?ng ??c’s head. Thích Qu?ng ??c rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam Mô A Di ?à Ph?t (“homage to Amitabha Buddha”) before striking a match and dropping it on himself. Flames consumed his robes and flesh, and black oily smoke emanated from his burning body. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.
Situation was “dangerously near breaking point” and expected that Di?m would meet the Buddhists’ five-point manifesto. United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk warned the Saigon embassy that the White House would publicly announce that it would no longer “associate itself” with the regime if this did not occur. The Joint Communique and concessions to the Buddhists were signed on 16 June. U.S. President John F. Kennedy said that “no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”
