Where Are The Monks? (Burma)

The 26-year-old monk was one of thousands who took to Burma's streets in late September. Like so many of them he had never imagined himself an activist—"I'm a normal monk, I'm not a political monk," he says—but he was carried away by the democratic fervor then sweeping Rangoon. On Sept. 25 he returned to his monastery late at night, climbing over the back wall since the front entrance was locked. The next night the soldiers came and took him away.

He was not the only monk to vanish, either from his monastery or dozens of others. The few foreigners who have managed to enter Burma since the junta's crackdown have all noted how empty the country's temples and monasteries seem to be. Thought to number around 400,000, Buddhist monks had been ubiquitous in Rangoon, Mandalay and other Burmese cities for centuries. "Something has happened," says Shari Villarosa, chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon. "It's frightening to think of. It's not like they all willingly left town."

In interviews, diplomats, monks and Burmese activists say that the junta has jailed those monks it sees as ringleaders and has persuaded abbots—some of them already collaborating with the regime—to get rid of dissidents. Many monks have been placed under "monastery arrest," forbidden to leave their campuses, except to collect their daily alms. Others have been forcibly derobed. And some terrified monks have fled to the countryside or to neighboring Thailand and China. "The monasteries in my neighborhood seem empty," says the 26-year-old monk, who was jailed for 19 days. "In my monastery, we used to have 100. Now we're down to about 31. I can feel the silence."

Newsweek article