English Transcript

Cập nhật 15/07/2008 14:54:00

Thousands of mourners turned out for the funeral of VN's top dissident Buddhist monk, Thich Huyen Quang.

Presenter: Sonia Randhawa; Speakers: Thich Quang Ba, Unified Buddhist Church monk and director of the Sakyamuni Buddhist Centre in Canberra; Professor Carl Thayer, Australian Defence Force Academy.

RANDHAWA: Thich Huyen Quang helped led the Buddhist movement that stood outside state control. Born in Binh Dinh in September 1920, he joined the monastery at the age of 12. Thich Quang Ba, is a Unified Buddhist Church monk and director of the Sakyamuni Buddhist Centre in Canberra. He says Thich Huyen Quang did not achieve his goals tackling problems of poverty and literacy, but he was still a major Buddhist leader.

BA: Even early as in 1940, he already played a great leading role in term of co-ordinating and uniting all the Buddhist groups that for rebuilding the Buddhist religion after a few centuries, not only just discriminating against by the French colonialism but also because of the civil war in the last few century. But particularly after 1975, when the Communists invaded the south, while many other monk biding their time and their safety. But Thich Huyen Quang and only a few other like the Thich Quang Do, tried to uphold and preserve the purity of the unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam which does not go along with the political regime.

RANDHAWA: Thich Huyen Quang spent his life tried to maintain Buddhist independence from colonial France in the 1940's, US-controlled South Vietnam in the 1960s, and from Communist rule from 1975.

Professor Carl Thayer is from the Australian Defence Force Academy. He says the importance of the church lies in its independence.

THAYER: The Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam has been an independent body within Vietnam that has an adversarial relationship with the state.

After Vietnam unified in 1975-1976, it sought a decade later to group all the Buddhists in the South under one organised state Buddhist Church and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam refused to take part in that. And so there's been a constant source of tension between the state and the Unified Buddhist Church and its leaders have been subject to repression and house arrest in its properties, its temples. Some of them have been seized by the government and there's been disruptions about the training of Buddhist monks and novices. So the Vietnamese state attempts to have control over all organisations in society and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam has resisted that control.

RANDHAWA: How significant is the church?

THAYER: Well, it's significant historically and that the word "Unified" itself means that it breached the north-south divide and has adherents throughout the country and it has a social welfare mission in competition with the state that has caused the state to arrest and disrupt those particular activities. But since the vast majority of Vietnamese are Buddhists and many overseas Vietnamese are Buddhist, it has politically significant support.

RANDHAWA: He says the succession remains uncertain.

THAYER: Again that's a contentious point of struggle. Before the patriach died, he must have appointed a successor. The Unified Buddhist Church itself through its own processes will attempt to identify and make one of its leading dignatories the new patriach. The Vietnamese Government will try to contest that. It sees this as a breakaway group or as a group that refused to comply. So once again, there will be a source of tension and friction between an organisation that's fought to maintain its autonomy and the state which seeks to incorporate it.

RANDHAWA: Spokesman from the Vietnamese government, Le Dung, was unavailable for comment.