and formed an opposition to Saigon. They sheltered and protected hundreds of thousands of ARVN draft dodgers and deserters, and organized them into their own army, supplying them with American weaponry obtained from corrupt ARVN commanders. The Hòa Hảo, having created a "Civil Guard Force", became a formidable foe for Thiệu, who declared the dissolution of the Hòa Hảo militia on 30 January 1975. The Thiệu government assaulted the Hòa Hảo for the first time since 1963. They arrested Lê Trung Tuấn, the director of the Hòa Hảo Central Institute, and Trần Hữu Bẩy, the commander of the Bảo An military wing, which was later banned by the government. The men were sent before a Cần Thơ military court, where they were sentenced to six years of hard labor. Government forces had arrested as many as 600 Hoahaoists by February. Clashes erupted in the Mekong Delta; ARVN troops killed seven Hòa Hảo militiamen and wounded sixteen others after surrounding ten thousand Hòa Hảo, including militiamen from the now-banned Bảo An military wing who dug in around a pagoda. Lương Trọng Tường, the Hòa Hảo's leader, and members of the movement's high council were among those besieged. Despite all these, An Giang, the religion's home province, became a government stronghold until the last months of the war. Before the Fall of Saigon in 1975, at least two Hòa Hảo Regional Force battalions were sent to neighboring Kiên Giang Province, and hundreds of thousands of Hòa Hảo served in ARVN units across the country. Thousands more trained soldiers were stationed in the provinces of An Giang and Châu Đốc. Many of these soldiers joined guerrilla forces on the outskirts of the Hòa Hảo homeland, which was relatively unscathed by war. After the war, there were reports of a major anti-Communist military insurgency in the Mekong Delta, though not much is known due to the country's secretive nature at the time. In November 1977, a government decree specified that religious activities must be consistent with socialism. Individual Hòa Hảo practices were allowed, but no explicit reference to Sổ was permitted, and his written works were outlawed. Vietnamese Communist authorities reported military operations to defeat the remaining forces in January 1978. They were assumed to be Hòa Hảo insurgents by the American media, who numbered in the thousands. Nevertheless, the Hòa Hảo claimed to have three million adherents in 1978. They were marked for