From Sydney Morning Herald :

Untold story: how Burma brutalised its monks

Fight to survive ... a labourer carries debris from a building being demolished by hand. Many in Burma earn less than a dollar a day.
Photo: Andrew Meares

Connie Levett in Rangoon
October 8, 2007

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THE mystery of what happened to Burma's saffron army, the thousands of monks who inspired a nation to rise up against a brutal regime, then vanished overnight, has been unlocked.

Taken from their monasteries in a wave of midnight raids, they have been held in primitive, humiliating conditions designed to break them down physically, emotionally and spiritually.

The account of an 18-year-old novice, who was taken from the Mingalar Rama monastery in Rangoon, reveals that while the military may be in physical control, the monks still wield a powerful spiritual weapon.

He said soldiers at the Government Technical Institute in Insein, one of four detention centres set up to handle the thousands of people arrested, broke down in tears when monks warned them they would go to hell for the way they had treated the detainees.

The treatment that has angered the monks includes lack of medical care, lack of sanitation, brutality in detention and disrespect for the Buddhist robes.

In seven days of detention, monks and civilians who were injured during the fighting received no medical attention, the young monk said.

"One monk from Nywe Kyar Yan monastery, you could see the bone in his arm but they never treated it," he said.

Another monk who had hurt an eye in fighting had now lost it. Three civilians who did not receive medical attention died at the technical institute, the young monk said.

The monk was taken by the junta at 4am on September 27. "The soldiers invited us to come and have breakfast with them. We knew it was not breakfast, but we did not fight them like they did at Nywe Kyar Yan," he said. The monastery's 99 monks were put in canvas-covered army trucks and taken straight to the Government Technical Institute, close to Insein prison, where political prisoners are detained for decades at a time.

Once there, the monks were put in rooms where they had to sit in lines, cross-legged without moving, hands clasped at the back of their necks, heads bowed in the submission pose.

They were beaten if they looked up or, as they became weaker, if they toppled over.

"Some soldiers were told by the monks, 'you are committing a very serious crime, serious enough to go to hell'. Some of them were crying, saying they were just doing what they were told," the young monk said.

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