[Buddha-l] In desperate times, Burmese turn to their monks

[jkirk]

The usual press stories about Burma tend to suggest that theonly
institution left there is the military and its junta of corrupt
rulers. But the monkhood is the other institution, still strong,
still helping the people.
The  military are actually preventing people from receiving aid.
Huge contrast to the Chinese military dealing with their
earthquake.
Joanna
 
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/30/asia/monks.php

 <http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/30/asia/monks.php#> KUN
WAN, Myanmar: It is a scene Myanmar's ruling generals are
unlikely to see played out for themselves: As a convoy of trucks
carrying relief supplies, led by Buddhist monks, passed through
storm-devastated villages, hungry children and homeless mothers
bowed in supplication and respect.

"When I see those people, I want to cry," said Sitagu Sayadaw,
71, one of Myanmar's most respected senior monks.

At his makeshift clinic in this village near Bogalay, an
Irrawaddy Delta town 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, southwest of
Yangon, hundreds of villagers left destitute by Cyclone Nargis
arrive each day seeking the assistance they have not received
from the junta or international aid workers.

They paddle for hours on the stormy river, or carry their sick
parents on their backs through the mud and rain - all traveling
from kilometers around to reach the one source of help they know
they can always depend on: Buddhist monks.

The May 3 cyclone left more than 134,000 dead or missing and 2.4
million survivors grappling with hunger and homelessness.
Recently, people who had taken shelter at monasteries or gathered
on roadsides waiting for aid to arrive were being displaced
again, this time by the junta, which wants them to stop being an
embarrassment to the government and return to their villages "for
reconstruction." UN officials said Friday that refugees were also
being evicted from government-run camps.

But they have little left of their homes and find themselves
almost as exposed to the elements there as their mud-coated water
buffaloes. Meanwhile, outside aid is slow to arrive, with foreign
aid agencies gaining only incremental access to the hard-hit
Irrawaddy Delta and the government impounding cars of some
private Burmese donors.

"In my entire life, I have never seen a hospital. I don't know
where the government office is. I can't buy anything in the
market because I lost everything to the cyclone," said Thi Dar.
"So I came to the monk."

With tears welling in her eyes, the 45-year-old woman pressed her
hands together in respect before the first monk she saw at
Sitagu's clinic and told her story. The other eight members of
her family were killed in the cyclone. She now felt suicidal but
no longer had anyone to talk with. The other day, word reached
her village that a monk had opened a clinic 10 kilometers
upriver. So on Thursday, she got up early and caught the first
boat going upstream.

Nay Lin, 36, a volunteer doctor at the Kun Wan clinic, one of the
six emergency clinic shelters Sitagu has opened in the delta,
said: "Our patients suffer from infected wounds, abdominal pains
and vomiting. They also need counseling for mental trauma,
anxiety and depression."

Since the cyclone, the Burmese have become even closer to the
monks while their alienation from the junta grows. This bodes ill
for the government, which brutally cracked down on thousands of
monks when they took to the streets last September appealing to
the generals to improve conditions for the people. [more in
article]