Burma Crackdown Continues
Dec 1st, 2007
Burma’s military junta has closed a monastery that served as a hospice for AIDS patients and is continuing to arrest dissidents, according to a top US diplomat in the country.
In Bangkok Friday (30 Nov) on a short visit to Thailand, Shari Villarosa, US Charge d’Affaires in Rangoon, confirmed that there remained unusually few monks on the streets of Rangoon, as well as in other major cities.
“The question is: Where are all the monks?” she asked.
She also noted that Rangoon was “very quiet and still very tense”, adding that there were “reports almost on a daily basis of people being picked up” by security forces.
She said this “raises questions about the sincerity of the military in pursuing what we would consider to be a genuine dialogue leading to national reconciliation”.
She added: “It’s hard to see that shutting monasteries (and) continuing to harass people is progress.”
Reports said that on Thursday (29 Nov), soldiers in three army trucks surrounded the Maggin monastery, whose monks are said to have played a major role in the uprising against the military regime in September.
Six HIV/AIDS patients living at the monastery on Maykala Street, which also served as a hospice, were taken away to an unknown location.
The few remaining monks were told to leave and the monastery was sealed.
The Chiang Mai-based journal Irrawaddy reported that the abbot of Maggin monastery, U Indaka, a former political prisoner, was being detained at an unknown location.
One Rangoon resident told The Straits Times: “Many monasteries are down to just a few monks, and there are stories of monks refusing offerings from local military officers and giving whatever they get back to the people.
“There are stories of junior security police and army and intelligence officers deserting. The mood is bitter, but turned inward. No one talks about things on the streets,” said the man who did not wish to identify himself.
Villarosa said there was no sign that the top leadership of the ruling State Peace and Development Council was taking any measures to alleviate the economic hardship of the people.
That was the spark for protests in late August, which built up to open defiance by monks in September, provoking a bloody crackdown by the military on the streets of Yangon.
The fresh arrests and closure of the hospice monastery came a little over a week after the end of the Asean summit in Singapore, and ahead of a meeting on Monday (3 Dec) of the constitutional drafting committee set up by the military junta.
The junta has also summoned journalists and diplomats to the new capital, Nyaypidaw, this weekend ahead of the meeting. (By NIRMAL GHOSH/ The Straits Times/ ANN)