Posted by Damozel | What have the Myanmar junta done with---or to---the monks of Rangoon? Nobody knows. "Pools of blood stain monastery doorways, memories linger of monks as young as 15 being clobbered over the head with truncheons and rifle butts."(Independent) "The gates were open at Rangoon's glittering Shwedagon temple yesterday but soldiers, not monks, wandered its marble-floored shrines and pavilions."(Independent)
""The monks are gone. We are worried about them. We don't know where they are,"" said a guide at the temple. (Independent)
One young monk who was present during a raid at the Shwedagon Pagoda said: "I was sitting with about 30 monks on the ground, praying at the place of the old brass Buddha. The police appeared very suddenly. There were definitely over 100, perhaps as many as 200. Carrying riot shields, truncheons and bayoneted rifles, they spread across the compound in front of us, some beating their shields, others aiming their guns....Without any sort of warning, they charged at us, firing over our heads with real bullets. Some of us got up and ran but they caught many monks and beat them with their truncheons and rifle butts. One monk they beat very badly, smashing his head. He was only 15 years old, he had just joined the monastery." (The Independent).
The dissident group, Democratic Voice of Burma, believes that they are being held in "at least four places---the infamous Insein Prison, a pharmaceutical factory, a technical institute and a disused race course.(USA Today). ""They are not in the normal prisons but in military and police camps. We hear that they are barely feeding the monks, nor are they allowing them contact with the outside."(The Independent).
A senior monk told The Independent that he thinks 3000 monks are now in custody, being held in jails and military camps.( Independent) The dissident group Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based group estimates that about 2400 monks are being held in custody, out of about 6000 people currently being "detained, not killed, but detained." (USA Today) An Asian diplomat says that the arrested monks have been "defrocked---stripped of their highly revered status and made to wear civilian clothes."(USA Today) Many of them are likely to remain in jail for a long time.(USA Today)
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