Newsweek: The Silence of the Monasteries
The junta has stopped the protests. The big question now is where have all the monks gone?
By Lennox Samuels | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 19, 2007 | Updated: 11:34 a.m. ET Nov 19, 2007
The Silence of the Monasteries
Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
In spite of the religious significance of Burma’s pagodas, the number of monks at these sites has dropped dramatically since the September crackdown
The men were crammed into a tiny, overcrowded Burmese government detention-center cell. With no latrines in the bare room, they were forced to urinate in a corner. But when the guards finally reacted to the spreading puddle and intensifying stench, the men recoiled from the rags brought in. The maroon fabric clearly has been torn from Buddhist vestments, and the prisoners tacitly decide they’d rather live with the mess than clean the floor with monks’ robes.
The source of this report about Burma’s postprotest prison conditions is too sensitive to disclose. But the issue here is less Burma’s grim prison conditions than the unknown fates of those who had been wearing those robes. More broadly, what befell all the monks who took part in the September uprisings that Burma’s military regime ruthlessly put down? Buddhist monks, for centuries a ubiquitous presence in Rangoon, Mandalay and other urban centers, are in retreat, their public numbers down compared with the weeks before the protests. Some–no one knows how many–of the estimated 400,000 monks in Burma were killed or injured outright during the military crackdown. The remainders of them are being punished for being the inspirations, leaders and faces of the most recent attempt to force change in authoritarian Burma. “What has happened to all the monks?” asks Shari Villarosa, charge d’affaires at the United States Embassy in Rangoon. “It’s frightening to think of. There obviously has been some kind of crackdown on the monks. Something has happened to them. It’s not like they all willingly left town.”
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