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The Huế Phật Đản shootings were the deaths of nine unarmed Buddhist civilians on 8 May 1963, in the city of Huế, South Vietnam, at the hands of the army and security forces of the Catholic fundamentalist government of Ngô Đình Diệm. The army and police fired guns and launched grenades into a crowd of Buddhists who had been protesting against a government ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on the day of Phật Đản, which commemorates the birth of Gautama Buddha. Diệm's denial of governmental responsibility for the incident – he instead blamed the Việt Cộng — added to discontent among the Buddhist majority. The incident spurred a protest movement by Buddhists against the religious discrimination perpetrated by the Roman Catholic-dominated Diệm regime, known as the ''Buddhist crisis'', and widespread large-scale civil disobedience among the South Vietnamese. On 1 November 1963, after six months of tension and growing opposition to the regime, generals from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam conducted a coup, which saw the removal and assassination of Diệm on 2 November 1963. ==Prelude== In a country where surveys of the religious composition estimated the Buddhist majority to be between 70 and 90 percent,〔(The 1966 Buddhist Crisis in South Vietnam ) HistoryNet〕〔Gettleman, pp. 275–76, 366.〕〔Moyar, pp. 215–16.〕〔Tucker, pp. 49, 291, 293.〕〔Maclear, p. 63.〕 the policies of the staunchly Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm generated claims of religious bias. As a member of the Catholic Vietnamese minority, he is widely regarded by historians as having pursued pro-Catholic policies that antagonized many Buddhists. Specifically, the government was regarded as being biased towards Catholics in public service and military promotions, as well as the allocation of land, business favors and tax concessions.〔Tucker, p. 291.〕 Diệm once told a high-ranking officer, forgetting the man was of Buddhist descent, "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted."〔 Many officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam converted to Catholicism in the belief that their military prospects depended on it.〔Gettleman, pp. 280–82.〕 Additionally, the distribution of firearms to village self-defense militias intended to repel Việt Cộng guerrillas saw weapons only given to Catholics, with Buddhists in the army being denied promotion if they refused to convert to Catholicism. Some Catholic priests ran their own private armies,〔Warner, p. 210.〕 and in some areas forced conversions, looting, shelling and demolition of pagodas occurred.〔Fall, p. 199.〕 Some Buddhist villages converted en masse in order to receive aid or to avoid forcible resettlement by Diệm's regime.〔Buttinger, p. 993.〕 The Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country, and the "private" status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French, which required official permission to conduct public Buddhist activities, was not repealed by Diệm.〔Karnow, p. 294.〕 Land owned by the Catholic Church was exempt from land reform measures.〔Buttinger, p. 933.〕 Catholics were also ''de facto'' exempt from the corvée labor that the government obliged all citizens to perform; U.S. aid was disproportionately distributed to Catholic majority villages. Under Diệm, the Catholic Church enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and in 1959, he dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary.〔Jacobs, p. 91.〕 The white and gold Vatican flag was regularly flown at major public events in South Vietnam. A rarely enforced 1958 law known as Decree Number 10 was invoked on 7 May 1963 to prohibit the display of religious flags. This disallowed the flying of Buddhist flags on Phật Đản, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. The invoking official was the deputy province chief in charge of security, Major Đặng Sỹ, a Catholic who was charged with maintaining public security and was commander of the Huế garrison. The application of the law caused indignation among Buddhists on the eve of the most important religious festival of the year, since a week earlier Catholics had been allowed to display Vatican flags to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the appointment of Diệm's brother Thục as Archbishop of Huế. The celebrations had been bankrolled by Diệm's regime through a national committee which asked the population to donate money to Thục's jubilee. Buddhists complained that they had been forced to give a month's wages to pay for the celebration.〔Hammer, pp. 103–05.〕 Enforcing the law, the authorities tore down thousands of Buddhist flags that had already been unfurled on homes and pagodas in preparation for Phật Đản.〔(South Vietnam's Buddhist Crisis: Organization for Charity, Dissidence, and Unity ), ''Asian Survey'', Vol. 4, No. 7 (July 1964), pp. 915–28.〕 The origin of the order to enforce the law on the Buddhists has been attributed to Thục. Despite protestations from the Saigon representative to the central provinces, the order was enacted upon consultation with Saigon. Villages in the central region had converted en masse to Catholicism, with priests allowed special access to government facilities and funds. The designation of Buddhism as an "association" prevented it from acquiring land for the construction of pagodas.〔Hammer, pp. 110–11.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Huế Phật Đản shootings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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