Huế Phật Đản shootings

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 Roman 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.

In a country where surveys of the religious composition estimated the Buddhist majority to be between 70 and 90 percent, 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.

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