Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 2, 2007

The Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, then president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful coup d'état led by General Duong Van Minh in November 1963. On the morning of November 2, 1963, Diem and his adviser and younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were arrested after the Army of the Republic of Vietnam had been successful in a bloody overnight siege on Gia Long Palace in Saigon. The coup was the end result of nine years of autocratic and nepotistic family rule in South Vietnam. Discontent with the Diem regime had been simmering below the surface, and exploded with mass Buddhist protests against long running religious discrimination after the government shooting of protesters who defied a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag. However, when rebel forces entered the palace, the brothers were not present, as they had escaped the previous night to a loyalist shelter in Cholon. The brothers had kept in communication with the rebels through a direct link from the shelter to the palace, and misled them into believing that they were still in the palace. Soon after, the Ngo brothers agreed to surrender and were promised safe exile; after being arrested, they were instead executed in the back of an armoured personnel carrier by ARVN officers on the journey back to military headquarters at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. (more...)

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