Ngo Dinh Diem

Buddhist crisis

The regime's relations with the United States worsened during 1963 as discontent among South Vietnam’s Buddhist majority was simultaneously heightened. The Vietminh controlled the north while the French backed State of Vietnam controlled the south with Diệm as the Prime Minister. He fled to Saigon disguised as a Japanese officer.

A Roman Catholic Diệm pursued biased and religiously oppressive policies against the Republic's Montagnard natives and its Buddhist majority that were met with protests epitomized in Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963. Amid religious protests that garnered worldwide attention Diệm lost the backing of his US patrons and was assassinated along with his brother Ngô Đình Nhu by Nguyễn Văn Nhung the aide of ARVN General Dương Văn Minh on 2 November 1963 during a coup d'état that deposed his government. In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam.