The Live Burning Monk :: Captured by Malcolm Browne, in 1963

In 11 June 1963, most of the country along with Americans couldn’t find Vietnam on a map due to lake of the communication. But there was no forgetting that war-torn Southeast Asian nation after Associated Press photographer Malcolm Browne captured the image of Thich Quang Duc immolating himself on a Saigon street. Thich Quang Duc was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnamese government led Ngo Dinh Diem ( 1^st President of the Republic of Vietnam). Photographer Browne had been given a heads-up with sock that something was going to happen to protest the treatment of Buddhists by the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. On that spot he watched as two monks was doused the seated elderly man with gasoline. At that moment exactly what will happen that was realized by him, and began to take pictures a few seconds later. For that horrible live picture Malcolm Browne won Pulitzer Prize. Quang Duc’s act of martyrdom became a sign of the volatility of his nation, and President Kennedy later commented, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.” Browne’s photo forced people to question the U.S.’s association with ­Diem’s government, and soon resulted in the Administration’s decision not to interfere with a coup that November.