I met the Burmese monk Ashin Kesara in Mae Sot. We traveled together the strenuous six-hour tour to No Phu refugee camp in Umphang District, Tak Province, where he is living as the abbot of a small monastery since more than two years now. He escaped to Thailand in December 2007. Two months after Burma’s military regime brutally cracked down on the peaceful demonstrations known as the Saffron Revolution. Ashin Kesara had been working together with Ashin Gambira, one of the leaders of the movement and had been in hiding for one year. We sat down in the only big open room of the monastery, in front of the golden Buddha statue and that’s when he told me his story:
I was born in 1984 in a small village near Bagan in Magway Division, Burma no foreigner ever comes there. I became a novice at the age of 10 and started studying Buddha’s teachings with the Sutra of Supreme Blessings (Mangala Sutra). With fourteen I transferred to Magway City studying more intensively and entering another teaching level for my examinations. I transferred to Insein Ywama Monastery in Rangoon with 18. It was a very famous teaching center, because of the strict discipline the monks used to practice there. At that time about five hundred monks were living there, which made it the biggest monastery in Rangoon.
At this monastery I met Ashin Gambira for the first time. He was just 20 years old, had just ordained as a monk. Although he stayed only for three months we were in the same class and became close friends. We come from the same district, in Magway division, but had never met before and I definitely had no clou about his political activities.
After Ashin Gambira had moved to the Htauk Kyant (forest) Monastery I visited him many times. He would tell everyone “Every religious person must work for the freedom from the military junta, no Buddhist or Christian or Hindu must accept this military regime.”
At that time I did not know that his brother, had been a political active after 1988. He was secretary of the National League for Democracy in Pauk, Magwe division. After my transition to a small monastery with only 60 monks, Aung Kyaw Kyaw came to me for hiding many times. Of course, I never told my abbot about this. But not only him, also Ashin Gambira came secretly now and then and stayed with me there for a week or a month. He then told me he had to do something downtown. He would always warn me to watch out for a person with short hair and a motorbike. “If you see such a person”, he told me, “please tell me”. He was very skilled in distinguishing a plain cloth agent from a civil person. For example, he told me to take a look at the feet. The plain cloths wear socks, so their feet are a little lighter and they always have short hair. Normal people in Burma never wear socks.
To be honest, I did not know exactly what he was doing. He was my friend and I liked him very much; so I wanted to help him. He was always very generous, he borrowed me money, and he loved books. Whenever we went out to town and there was a book that I wanted to read he would say “no problem” and just buy it for me. You have to know, Ashin Gambira comes from a wealthy family, which I visited in 2005. The family owns a mill and motorcar repairing workshop and a house near the university in Meik Htila. All his six siblings, his brothers and sisters are well educated. One of his brothers and one sister have studied at the university. Two other brothers work with his father at the business. His elder brother Sura is actually missing now since many years. He had been active in politics, was arrested and sent to prison. Later he escaped to Mae Sot and has been disappeared since then.
So, Ashin Gambira and his brothers were politically engaged very much, something I had never been. The village I come from is poor. Most people are illiterate, can only write their names. Coming from such a background it was like hearing about politics for the very first time when I met Ashin Gambira. But more and more I started to think very much like him up to the point that I sometimes was shocked about how deeply involved I had become. I mean, I new that most people who were active for our country ended up in prison. In my village no one had ever been a political prisoner. That scared me but, nevertheless, didn’t make me stop supporting my friend Ashin Gambira.
I remember a situation downtown at Sule pagoda in 2006. Ashin Gambira called me his secretary, which meaning I did not really know at that time (laughs) and asked me to stick pamphlets on the wall with him. So we got up at 3 o clock and took the bus to Sule pagoda. Ashin Gambira observed the people around us very carefully, sometimes pointing out one person and silently telling me: “Do you see this man? He has been changing from one bus to the other several times; he seems to be a spy. You have to be keen all the time and observe your surroundings properly!” So, when we arrived at the pagoda it was still early in the morning and only a few people were up. We just sticked the pamphlets at the wall and went away quickly, never looked back.
At that time, Ashin Gambira was already working underground, changing from monastery to monastery. For one year he lived at the Karen monastery in Ahlone Town Ship. This monastery is supported by the KNU (Karen National Union) and most of the monks there were actually KNU ex soldiers. I visited U Gambira there several times. This monastery was famous for political activists; U Gambira could mace a lot of contacts there.
In Rangoon he stayed at a newly opened monastery with a teacher from London, U Myintswe, who taught philology. It was the only monastery in Burma to learn this technique of speaking English and learning Pali. So monks from the whole country wanted to study there, it was very popular. U Gambia tried to organize as many of the monks as possible delivering his main and substantial message: “Every religious person must work to free all political prisoners and to free our country from the military regime.” He always made a great effort in this, but sometimes, when he was tired, he told me to talk. I knew very well, what he meant and tried my best.
In 2005 I had moved to Mandalay near Yadanabon University. I joined a UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) youth camp there, where a special program about health care HIV/AIDS was offered. Of course, a lot of spies were in that camp. But nevertheless it was a good opportunity to study and to learn English –my English was still very weak by then.
Before the water festival, many donors and ambassadors from other countries chose to visit our camp. For this occasion the teachers selected me to talk to them in an official meeting. The whole event lasted about one hour. I talked to the ambassadors, explained how to protect one self from HIV/AIDS and taught basic English to some students. The American ambassador gave me his email contact and asked me to keep in touch; he also donated some money for my education.
The very next day three people came and searched for me. Fortunately I was not in the camp that day. As I had no appointment with them, I asked everybody to tell these men if they would ever come back that I would not be there. But shortly after I received a summon from Lawaka office, which is the chief office in Mandalay city. I assumed that if I went to the office they would try to pressure me to sign something or maybe put me under arrest. That’s why I decided not to go and instead transferred to Rangoon.
In Rangoon the junta had actually come to my monastery to search for me there. So I had no place to stay and lived with U Gambira in hiding. We were moving from one monastery to the other, seldom stayed longer than one night at one place. We were obliged to hide our identity and all our whereabouts so that no one would be able to track us down.
Living in hiding like that didn’t hold us back from sticking many posters and stickers at toilet walls. The message on the pamphlets was for example:
- Reduce the prices of fuel oil and basic commodities
- Stop violence and hardships on the people
- Release Aung San Suu Kyi, all monks and political prisoners
- All religious people should work for the freedom from suffering
With the beginning of 2007 to stay hidden became increasingly difficult, especially for Ashin Gambira, since the junta was searching for him in every monastery he ever lived in. U Gambira told me, that it would be safer for us to hide separately, so we sometimes did not meet for a week or longer. When the Saffron Revolution actually started with all the marching on the streets, I was just back in my village, hiding. It was then, when I heard U Gambira giving a radio interview, which was such an amazing thing! I was really surprised, but also moved and impressed.
With all the demonstrations happening the officials from the nearby city started to collect the names of all the monks in our village, and so also came to the monastery, in which I stayed at that time. I gave them a wrong name and, of course, decided to leave again immediately searching for another place to hide.
But just before I left three monks who had participated in the Saffron Revolution came back to my village, disguised like ordinary man in lay clothes. They came from Ngwekyayan monastery and were badly injured. They told us that soldiers had broken in and raided the monastery at night. About one hundred monks hid under the wooden floor, but the soldiers had long iron pipes and stroke blindly at everybody under the floor. Many of the monks suffered severe injuries on the heads or other parts of the body. The three monks told us, that they ran away, disrobed and fled with a bus to the monastery in my village. They urgently needed to call someone outside the country and we had the only telephone in twenty villages around. With good reasons my abbot was extremely scared about this, for if the military would find out his number he would be definitely arrested too. But he was very old and we just made the call. I could hardly bear witnessing my fellow monks injuries, hearing their stories and see them cry in front of me.
I then decided to go to Mae Sot, Thailand, even though I knew nobody there, but in Burma it just became too dangerous. I tried to register for a new identity card but was rejected. Usually monks get one id card with the precept monks name and one with the lay name, so several monks found a safe way to escape with this layman id card. As it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to cross the border legally I went to a friend of mine in Karen state and stayed with him for one week. He gave me recommendations for my way to Mae Sot. In Myawaddy he had many friends in a monastery, where I could stay for three hours before I crossed the river to Thailand. I arrived in Mae Sot in December 2007. Until then I had been living in hiding for more than one year.
Two months before my own escape to Thailand I had received a call from a friend who had tried to contact me through another monk. He had fled to Mae Sot together with twenty other friends and now asked me to come to Mae Sot for an important interview. At that time I had discussed it with my mother but she had found it to dangerous and so I had not gone. The monks who had invited me had in the meanwhile been relocated to America with GRS. Some friends recommended me to go to this organization but when I arrived there the relocation program for Burmese monks had just expired. Instead they suggested that I should go to the No Phou refugee camp, which I did.
Although I was now safe for myself I worried for my younger brother very much. At Aung San Suu Kys birthday he had been at a ceremony together with U Gambira. They had given letters and flowers to the people. The SPDC had taken his picture and I knew that he now also had to live in hiding. So, when I arrived at the refugee camp I contacted him and told him to come to Thailand.
My friend Ashin Gambira was arrested on November 4th 2007. He was sentenced to 68 years in prison (later reduced to 63 years). Two days ago I talked to a monk from Burma, who had visited U Gambira in prison. He told me that U Gambira is not in a clear state of mind anymore; his mind is in ‘another place’. He suffered sever neurological damage and has been isolated in a dark room for a very long time. He now can barely open his eyes in the light, he doesn’t eat, and he doesn’t remember his friends. He just sits there and watches. His body is full of injuries with brown scars and I know that he has been severely tortured and kept in solitary confinement.
In December 2007 there was a newspaper article published in Burma with my name and U Gambira’s name and the names of many other monks. “These monks are suspicious, they have been trained by the UG (a peaceful Underground Group in Mae Sot)”, who the article claimed to be a violent group.
Luckily they don’t know the name of my parents; also U Gambira has never visited my parent’s house, so there is no connection to them. I sometimes wish I could go home but knowing what happened to Ashin Gambira and so many other friends, I know I just can’t.
By Alexandra Rösch
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