Where Have All the Monks Gone?

Until a few weeks ago, Burma had a very visible community of about 400,000 monks. Now they are a comparatively rare sight in the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities. Residents are asking: where have all the monks gone?

Burmese monks receiving for alms near Pegu, north of Rangoon [Photo: AFP]

Unknown numbers were rounded up in the recent demonstrations that rocked Rangoon and elsewhere. Many are still in detention, and others are confined to their monasteries. The authorities say they have released several hundred. But large numbers are very evidently still missing.

A resident of Mandalay, the historic heart of Burmese Buddhism, said: “Mandalay is now a city without monks.”

At the height of the demonstrations, the authorities banned the monks of Mandalay’s monasteries from continuing with their daily alms rounds, and a resident told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that the groups of monks who had resumed their early morning tours of the city had shrunk from more than 50 to fewer than 10.

“When we asked the monks where the others were they didn’t dare answer,” she said. “We don’t know whether they still alive or not.”

A Rangoon monk contacted by The Irrawaddy was also reluctant to talk about the missing clergy. “We can not say anything about the situation, nor anything about the monks of Maggin monastery.”

Maggin monastery is in Rangoon’s Thingangyun Township, where the abbot, three monks and four other people were arrested on September 26. Two monks and two of the other arrested people have since been released.

An abbot at a monastery in Sittwe said that before the crackdown the number of monks in his monastery had shrunk from more than 260 to 20. Other Sittwe monasteries had lost about one third of their monks, he said.

On October 1, the Burmese authorities also arrested an Arakanese monk, U Kawwidda, abbot of Thatka Thila Zaya Thidi Pati Pahtan monastery in Rangoon’s North Okkalapa Township. He is a former president of the Rakhine [Arakan] Young Monks Union.

Some monks returned to their homes during and after the crackdown on demonstrations, and others fled to the Burmese-Thai border. Four monks crossed into Thailand in recent weeks, but two have since returned to Burma.