Suicide in Many Forms

A South Vietnamese novelist and politician named Nguyen Tuong Tam sent his sons out to buy a bottle of whisky one night last week. For a while he sat drinking with them at his home in Saigon. "My sons, I feel very happy tonight," he said. "I am going to die very soon." Suddenly he keeled over, was rushed to a hospital where he died next morning. In his glass was found a lethal dose of cyanide.

Novelist Tam, 58, was a revolutionary leader in Indo-China's war against the French. But after independence in 1954, he grew increasingly disenchanted with the authoritarian rule of South Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. Fortnight ago, Diem's government charged Tam and 34 others with treason by conspiring to overthrow the President in an abortive coup attempt in November 1960. It was just two days before the scheduled trial that Tam committed suicide, and he explained why in a note he left behind. "The arrest and trial of all nationalist opponents of the regime is a crime that will force the nation into the hands of the Communists," he wrote. "I oppose this crime, and I kill myself as a warning to those people who are trampling on our freedoms."

Dragging Feet. Diem's government moved quickly to head off demonstrations over Tam's death, posthumously acquitted him of all conspiracy charges at the Saigon treason trial. At the same time, the prosecutors tried to implicate the U.S. as being behind the 1960 coup; the charge was vigorously denied by the U.S. At the end of the trial, government judges sentenced 20 defendants to prison terms ranging from five to eight years; nine others who had fled the country after the attempted coup were sentenced to death in absentia.

Tam's suicide and the Saigon trial served once again to stoke South Viet Nam's smoldering religious and political crisis. Last month Buddhist Monk Thich Quang Due burned himself to death on a Saigon street corner in protest against restrictions imposed on the country's 12 million Buddhists by Diem's predominantly Roman Catholic regime. After a series of nationwide demonstrations,* the government, under U.S. prodding, yielded to Buddhist demands and granted them equal religious and political standing with the nation's 1,500,000 Catholics. But influenced by his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, who believes that the Buddhists are Red dupes, the militantly Catholic Diem has dragged his feet in implementing these concessions. Many Vietnamese Buddhists, says Nhu, "have become fanatic, lost their common sense, and are ready to follow anyone who knows how to exploit them under the banner of religion." This was the kind of dogged anti-Buddhist attitude that has dangerously undercut government support. Already one general has resigned his field command in protest over government bungling of the Buddhist issue.

Simple Reason. Diem's intransigence has dismayed U.S. officials, who fear that mounting Buddhist discontent can only hinder the war effort against the Viet Cong, just when it is beginning to go well. Over the past year, government forces and their 14,000 U.S. military "advisers" have vastly increased their mobility and striking power against the Red guerrillas. More than 7,000 "strategic hamlets" have been built, now protect 8,000,000 Vietnamese from Viet Cong raids.

Despite all misgivings, the U.S. still stands behind Diem for a simple reason that he himself spelled out in a blunt warning last week: "For a moment, imagine that another government replaces this one: it could not help resulting in civil war and dreadful dictatorship." Washington has considered alternatives to Diem, but fears that the confusion of a coup could only benefit the Viet Cong and might end up with a regime no better than the present one. Thus U.S. Ambassador Frederick Nolting, who is soon to be replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge, returned to Saigon from Washington consultations last week with a personal message of confidence for Diem from John Kennedy. But Nolting also lightly rapped Diem on the knuckles for letting the Buddhist crisis continue. "The U.S. stands for and supports freedom of religion for all people," he said. "It would be a tragedy if the gains against the Viet Cong were wiped out by dissensions among Vietnamese citizens, who desire above all freedom of choice for themselves and for their country."

* Watching one Buddhist demonstration in Saigon last week, nine U.S. reporters were jostled by government police and had their cameras smashed. The cops said the reporters had started the row. The vociferously anti-Diem U.S. press corps in Saigon protested to President Kennedy.

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