Thich Quang Do is the conscience of Buddhism in Vietnam -- and a Nobel Prize prospect
ASIAWEEK - June 30, 2000
By KEN STIER Ho Chi Minh City
In a better Vietnam, Thich Quang Do would have his own television program, like his Buddhist counterparts in Thailand or Muslim clerics in Malaysia. A noted scholar, Do is articulate and charismatic, with an infectious sense of humor; he could easily hold his own against the vapid productions of state TV. Not only does the monk offer solace to a systematically de-spiritualized society, he can also recount the still-secret story of repression against Vietnamese Buddhism over the past half-century -- all from personal experience. North American and European politicians have nominated him for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet in today's Vietnam, Do, 72, is clearly unfit for prime time. The problem: He's a bit of an anti-communist. And no wonder. Do's spiritual master was executed before his eyes by communist forces in 1945. "They said he was a traitor," he recalls. After a seven-year sojourn in India, Sri Lanka and other parts of Buddhist Asia, Do returned to Saigon, where he taught Buddhist philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the Communist victory of 1975, he has spent nearly 15 years in jail or under "pagoda arrest." His offense: resisting the destruction of his Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which used to represent virtually all Buddhist clergy (20,000) and lay followers in southern Vietnam. The UBCV was replaced by a new "patriotic" Vietnam Buddhist Church, controlled by the Communist Party.
Since arriving in Vietnam two millennia ago, Buddhism has always remained outside government control -- supporting the state in times of need, more often checking its powers when it became corrupt or too authoritarian. The religion was regularly repressed by feudal, colonial, militarist and communist regimes. Personal experience convinces Do that the Communists have been the worst. "I have lived under French colonial rule, under [Emperor] Bao Dai, under [all the South Vietnamese regimes]," he says. "But none compare with the Communist dictatorship."
After expelling the French from northern Vietnam in 1954, Do charges, the Communists did their best to exterminate religion, especially Buddhism. All practices were banned and pagodas were confiscated or destroyed. Younger monks were sent to work brigades. Even today, there are few monks -- or any palpable sense of spirituality -in the north.
After 1975, a similar plan was begun in the South but it quickly ran into trouble. Forged through resistance to the repression of Catholic president Ngo Diem Diem, the southern Buddhists were better organized and more resolute than their northern brethren. In their first major act of protest, in late 1975, the 12 monks and nuns in a monastery collectively burned themselves. By April 1977, Do was in jail and by 1981, he and his superior, UBCV patriarch Thich Huyen Quang, were exiled to remote pagodas without undergoing trials.
International pressure helped free Do in September 1998, after a three-year prison stint for organizing an illegal charity for flood victims. Now settled in the Thanh Minh Zen Monastery in Ho Chi Minh City, Do is still not entirely free. His phone is tapped, and police shadow him whenever he goes outside. Novices are not allowed to live with Do and he is barred from teaching. "They want to isolate me as if I were a contagious disease," he says, laughing. When police prevented a United Nations religion official from visiting the monastery, Do thanked them for demonstrating Vietnam's lack of religious freedom more convincingly than anything he could have said or done.
Despite the constraints, Do, the UBCV's No. 2 official, writes letters to Hanoi which are circulated globally through the church's office in Paris, the International Buddhist Information Bureau (IBIB). Some trickle back into Vietnam, through press reports on the Internet or in Western-funded Vietnamese-language radio broadcasts. Do hit a raw nerve when he urged aid givers in the West to link continued assistance to Vietnam with improved human rights. The government, increasingly dependent on international largess as foreign investors stay away, was furious. Do was interrogated for hours and threatened with violating national security -- a crime punishable by death. Though the monk admits to some concern about death by a staged accident, more time behind bars he can contemplate with an equanimity that exasperates authorities.
Yet Do's prison days seem to be over. "He is a thorn in their side but they don't regard him as a major threat," says a diplomat in Hanoi. "Otherwise they would completely isolate him. Also, they can't clamp down on him without serious ramifications for their image aboard." That political umbrella keeps getting bigger, even though for Do it is an ambivalent honor to be better known abroad than at home. His latest nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is his third. And when a U.S. congressman visited Do recently, Hanoi slammed the move as an "unfriendly act."
The government tries to dismiss Do, and the few dozen other monks openly affiliated with the UBCV, as irrelevant because their church does not officially exist. "Do goes against the trend of unification and state law, as well as the regulations of the Vietnam Buddhist Church, so he is involved in illegal activities," says Le Dinh Hiet, a religion official. Hanoi claims the loyalty of the Buddhist clergy, whose numbers are now estimated at 28,000. Do. however, insists that most monks secretly back the UBCV, though they lack the courage to suffer pariah status.
Thich Nhat Hanh, who left his homeland after the war, is perhaps the best known Buddhist in the West after the Dalai Lama. He says of his compatriot: "The authorities have condemned and tried Do as a criminal who damaged national security. [But] deep down, they still respect Do as an exceptional personality, whose ethics and bravery set an example for his contemporaries. That is the envy of much of the [political] leadership."
The ongoing struggle between Vietnam's official Buddhist hierarchy and the UBCV centers on the qualitative functioning of Buddhism, long an indivisible part of life in the country. In a letter smuggled from his island pagoda prison, patriarch Quang, 82, says that "after 50 years of devastating war waged in the name of conflicting, imported ideologies, religious movements alone possess an unparalleled capacity to temper hatreds, defuse conflict and restore moral values in a society plunged in a spiritual and moral crisis. As such, they have a vital role to play in the reconstruction of the country."
Party leaders have preferred to rebuild on their own, though in recent years they have loosened restrictions on worship and tried to revive folk rites and festivals. The results, though, are perverse, according to critics. "The party is using state-sponsored religious bodies to confine religious activity to prayers, meditation and fasting," says Vo Van Ai, who runs the IBIB Paris office. "That reduces religion to quasi-superstitious rites."
Yet Hanoi is slowly acknowledging that its bureaucracy is overwhelmed by an explosion of social ills. Do offers motivated followers who can do more social work -- if the church's confiscated network of hospitals, schools, orphanages, social centers and a university is returned to it. In the more progressive south, officials are quietly experimenting with such assistance, though under state auspices. "For 25 years we have suffered continuous repression," says Do. "But we believe firmly that we will get freedom completely, sooner or later." Then he would be able to address his compatriots on prime time.