Thích Quảng Độ

Thích Quảng Độ (; 27 November 1928 – 22 February 2020) was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and scholar who was the patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) from 2008 until his death. Since the execution of his master at the hands of the communist Việt Minh in his teenage years, Thích Quảng Độ had been involved in political activism, firstly against the anti-Buddhist policies of the Catholic President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm.

After the fall of Saigon, the UBCV was banned by the communist government, and as one of the senior monks in the organisation, Thích Quảng Độ was at the forefront of the UBCV's defiance of the government, refusing to join the government-endorsed Vietnamese Buddhist Church. He was detained repeatedly by the communist authorities in the last 45 years of his life for his resistance and criticism of their policies, particularly his calls for multi-party democracy. During the Vietnam War period, he also served as a university academic in Buddhism, translated sutras and wrote books, notably a nine-volume Buddhist encyclopedia, and two-volume dictionary between Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese.

In 2002, Thích Quảng Độ was awarded the Homo Homini Award for human rights activism by the Czech group People In Need, which he shared with his predecessor as patriarch Thích Huyền Quang and Thadeus Nguyễn Văn Lý. He was also awarded the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Life Thích Quảng Độ was born Đặng Phúc Tuệ in Thanh Chau village and became a monk at age 14. During the Vietnamese famine of 1945, he walked for two days from Thanh Sam Temple, where he was training to his home village, where he carried his gravely-malnourished oldest brother from the home to the local temple and nursed him back to health. He quoted in open letter to Communist Party Secretary-General Đỗ Mười in 1994 that "Then and there I vowed to do all that I could to combat fanaticism and intolerance and devote my life to the pursuit of justice through the Buddhist teachings of non-violence." He was a professor at the Van Hanh Buddhist University and Saigon University among other institutions in the 1960s and 1970s.

Political opposition

While a member of the leadership of the UBCV, Thích Quảng Độ became an activist, fighting against the anti-Buddhist policies of the Catholic President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm. After a military raid of Buddhist monasteries in Hue and Saigon, Thích Quảng Độ was arrested on 20 August 1963. He and thousands of other Buddhists endured torture and persecution while imprisoned by the Diem government. He was released after Diem regime was toppled in military coup in November 1963. As a result of imprisonment, Thích Quảng Độ struggled with tuberculosis before having a lung operation in Japan in 1966. In a 2003 interview, he stated "People are very afraid of the government ... Only I dare to say what I want to say. That is why they are afraid of me". He was officially released in 2005, but a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention reported that he was still effectively under detention.

After 20 years at Thanh Minh, where he remained under continuous surveillance, Saigon authorities continued to send police to the temple to harass Thích Quảng Độ and abbot Thích Nguyên Lý about the residency status of the former,

In 2006, Thích Quảng Độ was awarded the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize, in recognition of "personal courage and perseverance through three decades of peaceful opposition against the communist regime in Vietnam, and as a symbol for the growing democracy movement". Thích Quảng Độ was unable to the receive the award, as the government prevented him from attending the ceremony.

In 2006, Thích Quảng Độ was also awarded the Democracy Courage Tribute by the World Movement for Democracy.