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PANGHSANG, Burma — “I had two choices. The first was to escape to Thailand, the other was to hide out here,” said 20-year-old Sandimar, one of two young Buddhist monks standing outside a temple in Panghsang, the unofficial capital of Wa State, an unmarked, lush, mountainous region shown on maps as eastern Shan State.

Backed up against China’s Yunnan State and within a day or two’s mule ride to the Golden Triangle, the undeveloped Wa State was once the world’s largest producer of opium and, by implication, the greatest source of heroin.

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However, nowadays the region is undergoing a series of transformations that is causing friction between leaders of the Wa armed forces and the brutal clique that rules from Burma’s capital, Naypyidaw.

Sandimar and Sai Sai fled from Rangoon after last September’s monk-led demonstrations were violently suppressed by the military authorities. Sandimar says he was among the crowd of monks that took to the streets to ignite the uprising.

On the night of September 28 he faced the consequences for his bravery—his temple was surrounded and attacked by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers. “The soldiers came at 4 am. They pointed their guns at us and told us not to move,” he says. “Those who didn’t follow the instructions were beaten. More than 100 monks were arrested at my temple.”

Dressed in their saffron robes, the monks were marched at gunpoint onto a bus and, in the darkness, driven to a school in the suburbs of Insein, in the northwest of Rangoon.

‘When we got there it looked like they had arrested every monk in Rangoon—there were thousands of us,” Sai Sai says.

He and Sandimar were locked in a classroom along with about 800 other monks. “We received food once a day, but we were never allowed to leave the room, even to use the toilet. The smell in the room became unbearable,” he said.

According to Sandimar, many of the soldiers were obviously uncomfortable with their orders as they had been brought up to look up to the Buddhist sangha (monkhood) with great reverence. Beating and abusing monks was a great sacrilege.

“However, other soldiers were extremely brutal,” Sandimar said. “They didn't care if we were monks or not. The guards made the monks disrobe and dress in civilian clothes. They told us this made it easier for them to harass us,” he said.

“All we could do was pray,” said Sai Sai. “But if the guards heard our voices they threatened to kill us.”

Sai Sai witnessed more than 100 monks taken aside by the guards and beaten up. ‘‘It was strange—they only hit them on the heads and told them the treatment was a ‘special present,’” he said.

Their nightmare lasted a week. Then Sai Sai, Sandimar and about 70 other monks were released and told to leave the city. The journey to the Wa mountains took Sandimar and Sai Sai four days.

“We are safe in Wa State, the regime has no influence here,” said Sandimar.

That the rugged Wa hills would be a sanctuary for monks and activists was by no means guaranteed, however, because the Wa region is unpredictable—it is currently an area in flux.

Wa State is controlled by the 20,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA), once dubbed the most heavily armed narcotics traffickers in the world by the US State Department. Although Naypyidaw’s generals have little influence in the region, a long-held ceasefire, and the fact the UWSA and the Burmese military occasionally join forces to do battle with the insurgent Shan State Army has led to the perception that the UWSA has become a firm ally of the Burmese regime.

Jiao Wei, a 46-year-old colonel responsible for the organization’s publicity and head of the Wa television station, is quick to dispel that notion.

“We have not criticized the regime publicly, but in our hearts everybody here is angry about what has happened. We don't support what the Burmese government has done, but we are independent of them, so we have no influence. However, we hope they can do a better job for their population,” he says.

The Wa area has never been fully tamed. British colonizers failed to conquer the almost impenetrable mountains and Burma’s rulers were also similarly thwarted.