A Monk’s Tale
covering burma and southeast asia
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A Monk’s Tale


By WAI MOE / MAE SOT APRIL, 2008 - VOLUME 16 NO.4


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He was assisted by many sympathizers along the way, and to avoid detection in the intense manhunt for dissident monks, he disguised himself as a layman as he drew closer to the Thai-Burmese border.

“I was stopped in at least six different places on my way to the border,” he said. “Sometimes I had to stay in a town or village for two or three days before it was safe to move on.”

As a veteran dissident, Pyinnya Jota has firsthand experience of what happens to those who are caught opposing Burma’s military rulers. He has been arrested and imprisoned twice, in 1990 and 1998, for expressing discontent with the regime’s policies.

“The first time I was arrested, soldiers raided my monastery. They took me to a detention center in downtown Rangoon,” he said, recalling how agents of the military intelligence services then tried to get a senior monk from the Sangha Committee in Ahlone Township in Rangoon to formally disrobe him. 

“In Buddhism, a monk cannot simply be disrobed by the authorities,” he explained. “Unless a monk chooses to leave the monastic order or is found guilty of a serious offense against his precepts, he should remain in his robes.”

The senior monk refused to cooperate, and Pyinnya Jota was taken back to his monastery. But on the way, the military intelligence agents demanded that he remove his robes. When he refused, saying that it would be improper to do so since he had not broken any Buddhist rules, they forcibly stripped him, put him in a truck and took him to an interrogation center.

“As the truck approached the interrogation center, I was blindfolded,” he recalled. “I was shocked that they could treat a monk that way.”

But the humiliation did not end there. When they arrived at their destination, Pyinnya Jota was taken into a room where four intelligence agents proceeded to punch him. His grief at being treated in this way was even greater than the pain of being physically assaulted, he said.

“I did not believe that monks could be beaten like this in Burma, a Buddhist country. Everyone in Burma respects monks, I thought. But I was wrong to expect our country’s evil rulers to treat monks with respect. It saddened me to learn that this was possible in a Buddhist land.”

The interrogation went on for four days. He had been arrested for taking part in a pattam nikkujjana kamma protest that had started in Mandalay on August 27, 1990, and the authorities wanted to know the names of others who were involved. They tortured him and addressed him in the rudest possible terms, insisting that his anti-government activities made him unfit to be a monk. He was not permitted to sleep throughout the harsh interrogation, which continued day and night.

Later, in early 1991, he and a number of other monks were taken to Insein Prison, and a military tribunal sentenced him to three years imprisonment. More senior monks received 5-year sentences.

In January 1998, he went through the same experience again. This time he received a 7-year sentence for speaking with an Australian journalist about the situation in Burma. After he was released in 2004, he joined Maggin Monastery, where he was involved in a hospice program to assist HIV/AIDS patients.

The hospice, the first of its kind run by Buddhist monks in Burma, was subjected to routine harassment by the military authorities. But Pyinnya Jota continued his work there because he believed that dying patients needed the spiritual care of monks.

“We monks must be actively engaged in social issues,” he said. “People in Burma often talk about metta [loving-kindness] but this is not just a word to chant. It must also be practiced. Everyone in the world needs active metta. Active metta can bring peace to the whole world.” 



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