Double Seven Day scuffle
History of Ho Chi Minh City |
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Attack on USNS Card (2 May 1964) | |
1964 Brinks Hotel bombing (24 December 1964) | |
1965 United States embassy bombing (30 March 1965) | |
1965 Saigon bombing (25 June 1965) | |
Operation Jackstay (26 March – 6 April 1966) | |
Operation Fairfax (November 1966 - 15 December 1967) | |
Viet Cong attack on Tan Son Nhut Air Base (4–5 December 1966) | |
Tet offensive battle of Cholon and Phu Tho Racetrack (31 January-11 February 1968) | |
Tet offensive attack on Joint General Staff Compound (31 January-1 February 1968) | |
Tet offensive attack on Tan Son Nhut Air Base (31 January 1968) | |
Tet offensive attack on US Embassy (31 January 1968) | |
Battle of West Saigon (5–12 May 1968) | |
Battle of South Saigon (7–12 May 1968) | |
Hijacking of Pan Am Flight 841 (2 July 1972) | |
Bombing of Tan Son Nhut Air Base (28 April 1975) | |
Operation Frequent Wind (29–30 April 1975) | |
Fall of Saigon (30 April 1975) |
The Double Seven Day Scuffle was a physical altercation on July 7, 1963, in
After their release, the journalists went to the
Background
The incident occurred during a period of popular unrest by the Buddhist majority against the
Known as Double Seven Day, July 7 was the ninth anniversary of Diệm's 1954 ascension to Prime Minister of the
Incident
American pressmen had been alerted to an upcoming Buddhist demonstration to coincide with Double Seven Day at Chanatareansey Pagoda in the north of Saigon.[6][9] The nine-man group, which included Arnett, Browne, AP photographer Horst Faas, David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan of United Press International, and CBS's Peter Kalischer and photographer Joseph Masraf waited outside the building with their equipment.[9][10] After an hour-long religious ceremony, the Buddhist monks, numbering around 300, filed out of the pagoda into a narrow alley along a side street, where they were blocked and ordered to stop by plain-clothed policemen.[9][10] The Buddhists did not resist, but Arnett and Browne began taking photos of the confrontation. The police, who were loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu,[9] thereupon punched Arnett in the nose, knocked him to the ground, kicked him with their pointed-toe shoes, and broke his camera.[11] Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Buddhist crisis, was a tall man, standing around 20 centimetres (8 in) taller than the average Vietnamese policeman.[5] He waded into the fracas swinging his arms, reportedly saying "Get back, get back, you sons of bitches, or I'll beat the shit out of you!"[5] Nhu's men ran away without waiting for a Vietnamese translation,[9] but not before Browne had clambered up a power pole and taken photos of Arnett's bloodied face. The police smashed Browne's camera, but his photographic film survived the impact. The other journalists were jostled and rocks were thrown at them. Photos of Arnett's bloodied face were circulated in US newspapers and caused further ill-feeling towards Diệm's regime, with the images of the burning Thích Quảng Đức on the front pages still fresh in the minds of the public.[4][5] Halberstam's report estimated that the altercation lasted for around ten minutes and also admitted that the pressmen had tried to apprehend the policeman who had smashed Browne's camera but were shielded by the rock-wielding policeman's colleagues. He also claimed that the secret policemen had also tried to seize equipment from Masraf and Faas.[10]
Diem's address on Double Seven Day worsened the mood of Vietnamese society. He stated that the "problems raised by the
Reaction
The indignant reporters stridently accused the Diem regime of causing the altercation,
Later on the same day, the
Since the embassy was unwilling to provide government protection against police aggression, the journalists appealed directly to the White House.[5] Browne, Halberstam, Sheehan and Kalischer wrote a letter to US President John F. Kennedy, asserting that the regime had begun a full-scale campaign of "open physical intimidation to prevent the covering of news which we feel Americans have a right to know",[4] which was noted by the press secretary Pierre Salinger.[10]
The protests did not garner any Presidential sympathy for the journalists, but instead resulted in trouble from their media employers. UPI's Tokyo office criticised Sheehan for trying to "make Unipress policy" on his own when "Unipress must be neutral, neither pro-Diem, pro-Communist or pro-anybody else".[14] Emanuel Freedman, the foreign editor of The New York Times reprimanded Halberstam, writing "We still feel that our correspondents should not be firing off cables to the President of the United States without authorization."[14]
The incident provoked reactions from both the Buddhists and the Diem regime. A monk called on the US embassy to send a military unit from the American advisors already present in Vietnam to Xá Lợi Pagoda, the main Buddhist temple in Saigon and the organisational hub of the Buddhist movement. The monk claimed that the attack on Arnett indicated that Xá Lợi's monks were targets of assassination by Nhu's men, something that Trueheart rejected, turning down the protection request.[9] Xá Lợi and other Buddhist centers across the country were raided a month later by Special Forces under the direct control of the Diem family. On the part of the South Vietnamese government, the de facto first lady Madame Nhu used her English-language mouthpiece newspaper, the Times of Vietnam, to accuse the United States of supporting the failed coup attempt against Diem in 1960.[9]
Arrest and interrogation
Later on during the day of the altercation, the police collected Browne and Arnett from the AP bureau in Saigon and took the pair to what they described as a "safe house".[13] The police interrogators said that they would be arrested but were unspecific about the charges. One charge was that of assaulting two police officers, but the interrogators hinted that more serious offences such as organising illegal demonstrations were being considered. The officers conversed among themselves in French, a language which the reporters did not speak, but Arnett thought that they mentioned the word espionage.[13] After four hours of questioning, the pair were charged with assault. Browne and Arnett in turn filed charges against the police over the altercation, and demanded compensation for the damage to their photographic equipment.[9] Arnett and Browne were temporarily released in the evening, after which the whole Saigon press corps stormed the US embassy.[13]
Browne and Arnett were called in for five hours of questioning on the following day. Arnett was accompanied by a British embassy official who, reflecting Arnett's New Zealand citizenship, provided consular assistance on behalf of Wellington.[14] In the end, Diem agreed to have the charges against Browne and Arnett dropped after hours of heated argument with US Ambassador Frederick Nolting, who had returned from his vacation.[9]
Notes
- ^ a b c d Jones, p. 247.
- ^ Jacobs, pp. 141–143.
- ^ Jones, pp. 248–262.
- ^ a b c d Hammer, p. 157.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Jones, p. 285.
- ^ a b c Jones, p. 286.
- ^ Jacobs, p. 95.
- ^ Hammer, p. 147.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Langguth, p. 219.
- ^ a b c d e f Halberstam, David (July 8, 1963). "Police in Saigon Jostle Newsmen". The New York Times.
- ^ Prochnau, p. 328.
- ^ a b c Hammer, pp. 157–158.
- ^ a b c d Prochnau, p. 329.
- ^ a b c Prochnau, p. 330.
References
- ISBN 0-525-24210-4.
- Jacobs, Seth (2006). Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950–1963. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-4447-8.
- Jones, Howard (2003). Death of a Generation: how the assassinations of Diem and JFK prolonged the Vietnam War. New York City: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505286-2.
- ISBN 0-684-81202-9.
- ISBN 0-8129-2633-1.