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The Huế chemical attacks occurred on 3 June 1963, when soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) poured liquid chemicals from tear gas grenades onto the heads of praying Buddhists in Huế, South Vietnam. The Buddhists were protesting against religious discrimination by the regime of the Roman Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm. The attacks caused 67 people to be hospitalised for blistering of the skin and respiratory ailments. The protests were part of the Buddhist crisis, during which the Buddhist majority in South Vietnam campaigned for religious equality after nine people were killed by government forces while defying a ban that prevented them from flying the Buddhist flag on Vesak. The incident prompted the United States to privately threaten to withdraw support for Diệm's government and when the Americans finally reduced aid a few months later, the army took it as a green light for a coup. An inquiry determined that the chemical used in the attack was a liquid component from old French tear gas grenades that had never functioned properly. The findings exonerated the ARVN soldiers from charges that they had used poison or mustard gas. The outcry over the attack had already forced Diệm to appoint a panel of three cabinet ministers to meet with Buddhist leaders for negotiations regarding religious equality. The talks led to the signing of the Joint Communique, but the policy changes it provided were not implemented and widespread protests continued, leading to the assassination of Diệm in a military coup. ==Background== In a country where demographic surveys estimated the Buddhist majority to be between 70 and 90 percent,〔Moyar, pp. 215–216.〕〔Tucker, pp. 49, 291, 293.〕〔Maclear, p. 63.〕 President Ngô Đình Diệm's policies generated claims of religious bias. A member of the Roman Catholic minority in Vietnam, he pursued pro-Catholic policies that antagonized many Buddhists. Specifically, historians regard the government as being biased towards Catholics in public service and military promotions, as well as in the allocation of land, business favors, and tax concessions.〔Tucker, p. 291.〕 Diệm's family also seized businesses belonging to Buddhists in order to enrich themselves. 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. 280–282.〕 Forgetting that he was talking to a Buddhist, Diệm once told a high-ranking officer, "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted."〔 The distribution of firearms to village self-defense militias intended to repel Vietcong guerrillas resulted in weapons only being given to Catholics. Some Catholic priests ran their own private armies,〔Warner, p. 210.〕 and in some areas, forced conversions, looting, shelling and demolition of Buddhist pagodas occurred.〔Fall, p. 199.〕 Some Buddhist villages converted ''en masse'' to receive aid or avoid being forcibly resettled 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 colonial authorities, which required official permission to conduct public Buddhist activities and restricted the construction of Buddhist temples, was not repealed by Diệm.〔Karnow, p. 294.〕 Furthermore, the land owned by the Catholic Church was exempt from redistribution under land reform programs.〔Buttinger p. 933.〕 Catholics were ''de facto'' exempt from the corvée labor that the government obliged all citizens to perform and the government disproportionately allocated funding to Catholic majority villages. Under Diệm, the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and in 1959, he dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary.〔Jacobs, p. 91.〕 The Vatican flag was regularly flown at major public events in South Vietnam. On 7 May 1963, government officials invoked a rarely enforced 1958 law known as Decree Number 10 to prohibit the display of religious flags, forbidding Buddhists from flying their flag on Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. The application of the law caused indignation among Buddhists in the lead-up to the most important religious festival of the year, as Catholics had been allowed to display Vatican flags a week earlier at a celebration for Diệm's elder brother, Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục.〔Hammer, pp. 103–105.〕〔Jacobs, p. 142.〕 On 8 May, in Huế, a crowd of Buddhists protested against the ban on the Buddhist flag. The police and army broke up the protest by opening fire and throwing grenades at the demonstrators, leaving nine dead.〔Jacobs, p. 143.〕〔Hammer, pp. 113–114.〕 Diệm's denial of governmental responsibility for the incident, and instead blaming members of the Viet Cong insurgency, led to growing discontent among the Buddhist majority. The incident spurred a protest movement by Buddhists against the religious discrimination of Diệm's Roman Catholic-dominated regime. The dispute came to be known as the Buddhist crisis, and it provoked widespread and large-scale civil disobedience throughout South Vietnam, persisting throughout May. The objective of the protests was to have Decree Number 10 repealed, and to force the implementation of religious equality.〔Jacobs, pp. 144–147.〕〔Jones, pp. 252–260.〕 At the time, the United States, the main backer of South Vietnam in the Cold War, had 16,000 military advisers in the country to assist the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the war against the Vietcong insurgency, which sought to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. Washington wanted the dispute with the Buddhists to be resolved quickly so that it would not dampen public morale and detract from the fight against the Vietcong.〔Jacobs, pp. 100–02. 〕〔Karnow, pp. 305–312, 423.〕 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 chemical attacks」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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