-Russo-Asian Trade
Afghanistan
Roubles million
Soviet Exports 1961
35.5 35.5
Soviet Imports
Burma
3.5 5.3
India
Indonesia
85.9 112.5 28.2 52.7
Cambodia
1.4 2.0 5.6 1.8 2.0 152.6 0.3 0.7 0.3
1962 1961 1962
17.7 22.8 2.2 11.1 60.2 64.5 30.5 34.8 5.5 144.9
Thailand
Ceylon
Malaya Nepal
Japan
TOTAL
1.5 0.9 8.8 8.4 1.6 9.1 8.1 5.5 101.7
101.7 59.9 131.2
261.4 322.2 345.9 428.7
Source: Official Soviet Trade Statistics.
to
million), Indonesia (37 million), Malaya (12,9 million), Thailand (8 million) and Cambodia (900,000). Exports to West Europe amounted in 1962 to 6.2 million metres, African countries (mainly Ghana and Sudan) 39,6 million, Fast Europe (mainly Bulgaria) 22.3 million, Middle East 4.4 million nd Cuba 3.2 million. In addition nearly 20 million metres were exported to Asian Commu- nist countries (mainly Mongolia),
Soviet imports of Cotton piecegoods from East European countries increased from 29.2 million metres in 1961 to 45.7 million in 1962, and imports from China increased from 24.1 million to 464 mil- lion during the same period. Will the Chinese deliveries to the Soviet Union
dry up and will the Soviet Union in this case look for new suppliers?
Short of a complete break in relations between the two countries it is to be expected that Chinese deliveries (includ- ing repayment of old debts) will continue, but possibly at a lower level. This might easily have the effect that the Chinese authorities would try to sell their "sur- plus" in other markets. An Indian tex- tile industrialist have pointed out to the Review that Soviet purchases are dictated by political considerations, and in cases like India by the fact that the Soviet Union has a
strong favourable trade balance and "has to buy something from down the accumulated Rupees accounts" accrued from Soviet exports of machinery and equipment. But even in the case of India the exports in 1962 (according to the latest U.K. Cotton Board Quarterly Review) amounted to only 3 million yards against a target of 30 million yards for that year and one of 40 million yards for 1963.
India to
run
Mr F. Erroll, President of the UK. Board of Trade, during his recent visit to Moscow stressed to Soviet Ministers the importance of accepting higher im ports of manufactured goods from deve- loping countries,
In connection with the Sino-Soviet con- flict the Soviet exports of machinery and installations, including complete plants,
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FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REV
to Asian non-Communist countries have gained additional importance. In 1962 these reached Roubles 69.9 million (against 1961's 48.5 million)—to India (42 million against 1961's 19.1 million), Indonesia (3.3 million from 300,000), Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, Cambodia and Afghanistan which took slightly less, 20.3 million.
Soviet exports of these goods to Japan increased from Roubles 1 million in 1961 to 1.4 million in 1962, but at the same time Soviet imports of machinery and installations from Japan have increased from Roubles 25.8 million in 1961 to 70.8 million in 1962.
Soviet exports of crude oil to Japan de- creased from 2.2 million tons in 1961 to 2.1 million tons in 1962, but exports of oil products increased from 808,300 tons to 842,900 tons during the same period. Soviet exports of oil products to India show an increase from 174,800 tons in 1961 to 452,000 tons in 1962, and to Af- ghanistan from 72,500 tons to 94,100 tons.
Soviet total imports of natural rubber, which increased from 190,900 tons in 1960 to 360,300 tons in 1961, show an insignificant further advance to 361,700 tons in 1962. In 1962 the imports came from Malaya (280,200 tons), Indonesia (59,600 tons), Thailand (9,600 tons), Cambodia (6,000 tons), Burma (4,300 tons) and Ceylon (2,000 tons).
Ober 31, 1963
225
Page 273
A United Nations Mission has arrived in South Vietnam, at the invitation of the Saigon Government, to investigate accusations of religious persecution in the country. In the following article Mr Jones, our Research Director, who was recently in Saigon, summarises the events that have opposed the Government to the Buddhists and the students, and assesses the importance of the conflict.
Vietnam's Emerging Forces
By P. H. M. Jones
AT A CONSERVATIVE estimate 80% of the population of Saigon dislikes the régime of President. Ngo dinh Diem more or less intensely. But until recently it was not easy to explain the vast unpopularity it had acquired. In efficiency of adminis tration and standard of public morality it was manifestly superior to the régimes of Indonesia, the Philippines and other Asian countries, which have incurred no particular odium. In the economic field its record was creditable and would certainly have been better but for the Viet Cong rebellion that has raged the countryside.
On the whole the régime appears to have been disliked, in the towns at least, for strictly political reasons analogous to those for which a Frenchman might dislike de Gaulle. It was condemned as a "sham democracy" within which no genuine political opposition was allowed to develop; it was ridiculed as the government of a single family of "mandarins" from the Central Vietnamese town of Huê, the old imperial capital; in the higher ranks of the civil service and the army it was detested for having filled posts with personal adherents and informers of the President's family without regard to seniority or merit. In a different order of grievances, the régime was feared for the "re-education camps" in which thousands of its opponents-mostly, but not all suspected rebels or sympathisers with the rebellion-were held without trial for indefinite periods.
These are real shortcomings. But a much more potent influence on public opinion has been the mountain of rumour that has built up against the Presidential family. In Saigon rumour reaches stupendous peaks of extravagance. Thus an apparently level-headed citizen will take it for granted that Diem's sister-in-law, the famous Mme Ngo dinh Nhu, leads a life of debauch with a group of captains or colonels. How- ever preposterous, this suggestion is nonetheless damaging to the régime since she is a vigorous, if not always a prudent, champion of women's rights and sexual morality.
Even more harm has been done by persistent stories of corruption and peculation on a huge scale, directed chiefly against Mme Nhu-who is supposed to have acquired cinemas in Paris, coffee estates in Brazil and what not—and against Ngo dinh Thuc, elder brother of the President and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Huê, who is said to own vast properties in Saigon and elsewhere and to monopolise the traffic in forest products in the southern part of the country. Here again experienced observers have never discovered any con- clusive evidence against Mme Nhu at all events,
An outstanding characteristic of the Family is its Catho- licism. About 10% of the population of South Vietnam is said to be Catholic, including some 700,000 Tonkinese Catholics who fled to the South nine years ago when Vietnam was partitioned. It was known that in the countryside the Catholic curé would obtain from his flock a solid vote for the govern- mental candidate at election time. It was known also, or asserted, that Personalism, the official ideology of the régime,
was to some degree based on recent papal encyclicals. But before last May no report from Vietnam indicated that Catholic influence within the country had more sinister aspects.
Subsequently it has been discovered that Catholicism in Vietnamn resembles Free-Masonry in some Mediterranean regions. The Family, it appears, will trust none but Catholics, preferably from Central Vietnam, while in the army and civil service Catholics are favoured in every possible way. In fact the Catholics are said to serve as the privileged caste and ideological shock troops of the régime, which thus assumes the
of aspect rather aggressive minority rule. It is strange indeed that none of this came out before.
a
"Proconsul without a Mandate"
The events which opened the present conflict of the Government with the Buddhists and brought these facts to light are of typically Vietnamese complexity. Huê is the seat of residence of Ngo dinh Can, another brother of the President, who as "proconsul without a mandate”—he has no official position-rules Central Vietnam as his personal do- main. The régime appears to be particularly arbitrary and brutal in his region, where it must maintain its authority at all costs since the region adjoins the Communist North. In the first days of May the Catholics of Huê had celebrated the silver jubilee of Ngo dinh Thuc's elevation to the bishop- ric; the town was, it seems, embellished with portraits of the Archbishop and with Vatican flags. On May 8 the Buddhist faithful were to have commemorated with the customary processions and flying of Buddhist flags the anniversary of the birth of the Buddha, but two days earlier the Government at Saigon enacted, or revived, a regulation that forbade the flying of any but the national flag at religious festivals.
The authorities seem in fact to have feared that the festival might give occasion for anti-governmental demonstrations since May 8 is the anniversary of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the disaster to French arms that led to the partition of the country, and is celebrated as such in the North. At all events the Buddhists of Huê, which was festooned with Catholic symbols, saw the order as an act of discrimination. Ever more people flocked to the town's Tu Dam pagoda where a senior bonze, Thich tri Quang, harangued them on the injustice that the Buddhists had suffered. They were ordered to disperse, and when they angrily refused the police or the army appear to have fired grenades or machine-guns into the crowd. Nine persons were killed.
Vietnamese Buddhism, like that of China, is largely a Buddhism of the Great Vehicle. It is not strictly speaking the religion of any large and definable section of the people; it represents rather a mode of religious practice in coexistence with other modes, Confucianism and the cult of the ancestors. Until recently few religious groups were less fanatical than the Vietnamese Buddhist clergy and less inclined to collective action. While the monks of CamboPagrel thy ghof Budhist
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226 Page 274 of 344
countries of South-East Asia, which are lands of the Little Vehicle, have a marked influence in the personal and often in the political fields, those of Vietnam have, or had, neither influence nor respect. Thus the Buddhist agitation appears to indicate the emergence of a new force in the country.
Developments in the weeks following May 8 are related in the Review of July 11, at page 126. But the agreement con- cluded on June 16 between the Buddhist clergy and the Inter- Ministerial Commitice appointed ad hoc by the Government settled nothing. It was followed in a matter of hours by a serious riot when a large crowd attempted to break through a police cordon into the Xa Loi pagoda at Saigon; the crowd wished to celebrate the funeral of a monk who had publicly burnt himself to death-before the Cambodian legation-in protest against the discrimination from which his religion was alleged to be suffering. The Buddhists complained that some pagodas in the Centre were besieged by Police or army units, and that in the Saigon area the movement of monks and nuns was restricted and that some had been arrested.
At the same time an Inter-Sect Committee for the Defence of Buddhism was formed and the Xa Loi and Tu Dam pagodas, which are modern, ferro-concrete structures, became centres of an intensive propaganda campaign against the Government. Telegrams were sent to the Pope, President Kennedy, U Thant and Buddhist leaders in neighbouring countries. Several hundred monks and nuns went on “hunger strike" (July 16) and a demonstration was held outside the house of the American Ambassador, Mr Frederick Nolting, who had made some pointed remarks about "freedom of religion".
Religious Fanaticism
Next day the police used violence to disperse a procession, mostly of women apparently, and made many arrests; they also blockaded three Saigon pagodas with barbed wire, arrest- ing anyone who tried to leave. The barricades were moved on July 21 and 200 odd priests and nuns released, but at Saigon and Huê the demonstrations went on. At Phanthiet, 200 kilometres east of Saigon, a second monk immolated himself with petrol and August 4, then a third at Huê, a nun near Nhatrang and a fifth at Huê (August 13-16). More demonstrations and hunger strikes were held at Huê and Saigon, and in the former place more violence occurred when the police seized the body of one of the suicides.
The climax came on August 21 when martial law was proclaimed throughout the country and "special forces" burst into the Xa Loi, Tu Dam and other pagodas, which seem to have been sacked, and arrested some thousand monks and nuns-but not Thich tri Quang, a leading organiser of the Buddhist movement, who subsequently took refuge in the American embassy; Huê saw a pitched battle between the assailants and the local population. Then, on August 31, the Government organised in Saigon an anti-Buddhist demonstra- tion of some 30,000 persons, all apparently soldiers and civil servants or members of the government youth movement or Mmc Nhu's women's army, who of course attended under compulsion.
In all its most debatable proceedings the government has been ably seconded by Mme Nhu, with utterances of amazing levity. Her comment on the first burning, that the Buddhists had done nothing but "barbecue a monk, and at that not with self-sufficient means, since they had to use imported gasoline" h. Podefopriety. In her view moreover "the lash, even the rack if need be, is the proper answer to Buddhist
FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC RF W
opposition". Not unnaturally the monks were stung to fury: "down with the impolite, debasing, abusing and degrading behaviour of Mrs Ngo dinh Nhu" read the banners at one Buddhist demonstration. President Diem also was displeased: "it is only", said he, "because some have contributed either consciously or unconsciously to raising doubts about the Gov- ernment's policy that the solution of the Buddhist affair has been retarded".
Although Vietnamese society, especially its upper ranks, has acquired from China over the ages a veneer of Confucian urbanity, the people are perfectly capable of religious fanaticism. The most striking recent proof of this was the emergence of a fundamentalist and highly militant Buddhist sect, the Hoa Hao, originally under the leadership of a "mad bonze" who was killed by the Japanese. The origins of the new syncretistic religion called Caodaism were more peaceful, but both sects evolved political and military organisations which took advantage of national turmoil to carve out independent “fiefs".
These two movements drew their main strength from the South-West of the old colony of Cochinchina, where they were probably assisted by the rootless character of the rural popula- tion. The recent Buddhist "revolt" however started in the Centre and seems to have been almost completely urban. Of course the mood of desperation that nearly twenty years of war have brought to Vietnam might stimulate a religious revival anywhere; in any case the burnings sufficiently prove the presence of a religious or superstitious element in the agitation. But the Buddhist leaders certainly did little to meet the Government half way on the occasions when it showed a disposition to be conciliatory, and as time went on they seemed increasingly concerned simply to attack the régime. By early August Buddhist spokesmen were accusing it of exploiting the country for its own ends, subsisting only on American aid and failing by reason of its unpopularity to fight the Communists effectively. A popular protest with a more or less religious basis had been seized upon by a group of monks with political ambitions, who were determined to profit from the unorganised discontent in the country.
Not that their complaints were groundless. Until lately few people knew or cared that a decree of the Bao-Dai period put Buddhism as an "Association" in a state of legal inferiority to Catholicism, assimilated it to a trade union and obliged it to obtain official authority for every public manifestation. On the other hand it is clear that in the Centre at least the Catholics did in fact enjoy exceptional privileges. But the existing grievances were nothing compared with those obligingly pro- vided by the Government subsequently, first by refusing to accept responsibility for the deaths at Huê-when it lost a promising chance to gain some much needed popularity--- then by attempting, without the smallest justification, to tar the Buddhist leaders with the Communist brush and finally by storming the pagodas. The Government has in fact attempt- ed to suppress the Buddhist movement as it suppressed the Hoa Hao-vi et armis-in 1955. It may have saved face and scored a tactical victory, but in the process it has dealt what looks an irreparable shock to public opinion.
The affair may also have had other effects. To some degree it seems to represent reaction against Catholicism. Thus the Buddhists have demanded freedom to propagate their faith an activity they have never pursued before but which the Catholics certainly indulge in; some specifically anti-Catholic feeling has indeed been reported from Huê. Ilowever this has not been a general feature of the Buddhist movement. Any attack on Catholicism as such would in any case be bad tactics, since most Vietnamese Catholics are no
October 31, 1963
a
227
Page 274.
alike "enemies of the people". By its Buddhist policy the and Government had "trampled on our religious freedom' "a new and
impeded the war effort.
upon
more enthusiastic about the régime than anyone else. But the affair has been reported as producing in the army festering consciousness about religion". It is said that by mid-August in one division Catholic and Buddhist officers had begun to eat apart, while at a training school Buddhist cadets petitioned to have a chapel, like the Catholics. Among all ranks the affair must have seriously tried existing loyalties.
In recent weeks peace of sort has fallen
the Buddhist conflict. It was however broken by a minor riot in Saigon on September 25-apparently planned to coincide with the arrival from Washington of General Taylor and Mr McNamara and ten days later yet another monk managed to commit suicide by fire in the city's central market. The pagodas were reopened at the end of August, but they remained empty of worshippers for exceptionally persistent rumours assert that the few monks now to be found in them are "false bonzes"-minions of the police disguised in a bonze's yellow robes. Most of the genuine monks and nuns are still under arrest or in hiding. Thus in the eyes of the population the Buddhist affair is still in a state of crisis.
Like the Buddhist upheaval, the recent student "revolt" in Vietnam is a new thing and started at Huê. It was announced on August 17 that the Rector of Huê University, Fr Cao Van Luan, had been dismissed. He had apparently advocated moderation in the Government's treatment of the Buddhists and may have had an argument with Archbishop Ngo dinh Thuc on the subject. At all events forty faculty members of the University promptly offered their resignations and the students held a noisy street demonstration in his favour. On the next day (when Saigon saw by far the largest Buddhist demonstration to date) about a third of the students declared a strike in protest against the dismissal.
This unrest seems to have been largely directed against the Archbishop and against the strong-arm methods used by the régime in Central Vietnam. It spread to Saigon on August 24 when Vu van Mau, who had resigned from his post as Foreign Minister and shaved his head like a monk in protest against the Government's handling of the Buddhist affair, addressed a crowd of students in the Faculty of Law, where he formerly lectured, on the reasons for his action. His remarks were received with thunderous applause, and a student leader read out a declaration, to which Mau indicated his approval, asserting that Communism and dictatorship were
It was clear that with the Buddhist leaders out of action the torch of rebellion was being taken up by the students, many of whom were refusing to attend classes. Saigon University and the secondary schools in the city were imme- diately closed. Next day, August 25, students started to converge on the University for a mass demonstration; the police however were waiting for them. As fast as they arrived the demonstrators were dumped into lorries and carried off to military camps on the outskirts of the city. The schools were reopened on September 4, but massive arrests of secondary students followed demonstrations held at a number of Saigon schools on September 7, a major riot in the lycée Chu Van An on the 9th and further demonstrations in secon- dary schools on the 12th.
Official statements have announced that most of the students detained had been released; also that those aged over 20 would be drafted into the army, and those under 20 to re- education camps
"for an indefinite period". At all events many are still detained and were seen moving about Saigon in black marias at the beginning of October. The University remains closed and no date for its reopening has been given.
According to Ngo dinh Nhu, another brother of the Pre- sident and husband of Mme Nhu "the student movement is part of a Viet Cong plot aimed at creating unrest in the rear of the armed forces". In fact there appears to be little evidence for Communist penetration of the University students-for one thing, they have made no anti-American gestures of any con- sequence-but there may be a certain Communist element in the agitation in the schools. The Government claims to have indentified Viet Cong cadres among the secondary school students.
Most University students in Vietnam come from bourgeois families and had hitherto seemed to concentrate largely on getting good jobs and having an easy life; they have shown none of the passionate involvement in politics displayed by students elsewhere in Asia. Their "revolt" is therefore a striking witness to the Government's success in alienating the people's affections, and the savagery of the Government's retaliation has probably lost it even more favour, if it had any left to lose, than its handling of the Buddhist affair.
The Malaysians have had relatively little difficulty in the past in paying for their development, but their ambitions are growing while the rubber price declines, and there is now the prospect of heavier defence spending to eat into development funds. An Australian journalist who has spent this year in Malaya comments on the prospects.
The Malaysian Purse
From Peter Polomka, Kuala Lumpur
LOOKING BACK on six years of independence, Malaya may well feel proud of its achievements so far. The new nation was born bearing the scars of a costly, protracted struggle against Communist terrorist activities, and im- mediately faced a world-wide recession. For two years, little progress was possible.
wings. Recently, progress has been so good that a com- paratively ambitious Five-Year Plan looks almost conservative at the half-way mark. Growth may not be of the spectacular kind, but there is little doubt that real output has expanded substantially, and average incomes are higher than in the
mid-fifties. New projects were delayed; others slowed down, and even brought to a halt. Then the financial climate changed, and the fledgling nation began to find its
Looking forward gives less cause for comfortable feel- ings. Expansion of the nationalPagony 4s fog4harely
228
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