SIEGE STATE IN VIETNAM

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30216, 22 August 1963, Page 13

SIEGE STATE IN VIETNAM

Buddhist Pagodas In Troops’ Hands

(NZP.A.-Reuter—Copyright) SAIGON, August 21. President Ngo Dinh Diem yesterday signed a decree declaring a “state of siege throughout the territory of Vietnam which would continue until further notice,” the official Vietnam Press Agency said today. Grack Army units and tough police riot squads moved in and occupied the Xa Loi pagoda in Saigon and the Tu Dam pagoda in Hue, about 400 miles north of Saigon.

In the operation against the Xa Loi pagoda, shots were fired and there were casualties, but details were not available, sources said in Singapore. Troops and police pursued monks who fled from the Xa Loi pagoda. Communications with Saigon from Singapore and Bangkok were cut this morning. An English - language broadcast from Saigon, described by the announcer as the “voice of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam,"

said the Army was now responsible for security and all public gatherings or meetings endangering public security had been banned. Publications “harmful to public security” had been suspended. The Army had taken over all communications facilities, the radio said. The Xa Loi and Tu Dam pagodas were the main centres directing Buddhist agitation against the Government’s alleged religious discrimination. Saigon airport today was closed to traffic for * ‘military operations reasons,” a Pan American Airways spokesman said. According to the broadcast, troops and police searched three pagodas, including Xa Loi, and seized daggers, ex-

plosives, machine-guns and mines. The Army 'would “actively pursue” efforts to maintain public order and security, it said. The Government suffered nine casualties, five of them seriously hurt, when troops and police moved into the Tu Dam pagoda in Hue at 8 a.m. (midnight G.M.T.) this morning, according to a later radio broadcast from Saigon monitored in Singapore. Monks and Buddhist laymen attacked Government security forces with stones and sticks but failed to prevent the capture of the pagoda, the radio said. The situation in Hue and Nha Trang, an important coastal town about 200 miles north of Saigon, was now normal, the broadcast said. The radio did not give details of the civilian casualties in the operation against the Tu Dam pagoda. • Later a Vietnamese-lan-guege broadcast from Saigon said the situation in central Vietnam was “quiet.” The people in Saigon were "happy” because army and police units had taken over all Buddhist pagodas there, the broadcast said. Tension in South Vietnam has been mounting since May 8 this year, when Buddhists in Hue demonstrated against the Government’s alleged religious discrimination. Eight persons died and several others were injured in this demonstration. Later, four Buddhist monks and a nun committed suicide by burning themselves in a public protest against the Government. The majority of the people of South Vietnam are Buddhists and aibout half of the Catholics in the country are refugees from the Commune ist north after the 1954 armistice.