Burma: Than Schwe’s Irrevocable Public Shame
October 27th, 2007
By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Dear reader, I am loath to bring this to you. My stomach has shooting pains as I write this. That feeling of being at the edge of throwing up. Not from revulsion. From seeing the work of pure Evil.
There are two images that have been smuggled out of Burma. The first is this one… of this poor dear soul, who is lying dead in a mortuary in Burma having been beaten to death at Senior General Than Schwe’s orders.
That this holy man’s face is swollen from blows to the back of his head that are hideously apparent in the second picture… the swelling of his skin makes him appear somewhat young.
But, he isn’t. He is likely, given the thinness of his little childlike chest and wasted muscle of his arms, and the tiny white hairs of his beard, and his salt and pepper hair, likely more in his sixties. His chest as you can see is dead black because someone has mortally assaulted him, and this poor soul’s skin has torn away and dried in curls.
His body appears to have been washed somehow: he may have been in the river, dead on his back so that his wounds, which you see most in the second image, appear cleansed. Or he may have been left face down in the rain, so that most of his blood was washed away.
I wrote a post yesterday about this being the time of the year, October, when the tradition in Buddhist countries is to weave new red and saffron cloth to give to the monks for robes. Yet, diplomats in Burma have said the monasteries are empty and there are no monks to be seen, and no one knows where they are.
Today, Than Schwe, has heaped even more shame upon himself publicly by making a mockery of this holy October tradition. Than Schwe has held a contrived public photo op for himself, and forced some monks to stand and receive alms from ‘the pious’ …all the while being photographed for show.
To add to the shame, Than Schwe has maintained on state TV that no monks at all have died. None. Zero.
Yet, Schwe has no words telling the whereabouts of the hundreds, if not thousands of monks still unaccounted for.
Than Schwe named “Religious Affairs Minister,” a Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung, who claims today that “bogus monks” working with imprisoned activists had organized the demonstrations.
The Burma File Newsdesk Special has reported that Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung has also claimed that, “True monks had remained in their monasteries,” he said in an interview accompanied by pictures of pious members of the regime offering alms and tributes to solemn-faced clergy.
Thus Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung became Than Schwe’s second swamp of shame, for Schwe ordered his minister to also say the following on state TV: “No monks at all have died.”
(This… presumably to go along with earlier claims by Than Schwe and his ‘ministers,’ that when he caused the monasteries to be invaded the troops found nothing but monks, pornography and American flags with swastikas painted on them…)
Mr. Brigadier General’s appears to knowingly and purposefully falsify information according to Than Schwe’s last hope to pull the wool over the eyes of the International Community. It’s way too late for that, however.
The evidence of Than Schwe’s murders of holy men is clear. Concise. Here we see the brutality of the injuries on this monk’s body. And, in an image I ran with an article last week, there was another proof, of a different dead monk, face down and dead in the river, stripped naked of his robes and beaten literally black from ears to tail-bone.
I can only say this at this moment: Than Schwe, you are on very thin ice security-wise. That you have unleashed such evil in young Buddhist men who are your coddled soldiers, that you clearly have near you men who are psychopaths who can beat an innocent holy person beyond recognition, and to death, and not think a thing of it … means you and your family will now never, ever be safe. Ever. Psychopaths live to do harm, Than Schwe. They are not particular about to whom.
____________
I’ve put on the next page the second picture of the same murdered elder monk. I have put it there rather than here for it is very hard to look at. I wanted you to have a choice in the matter, for the image is likely to disturb most. Someone must have gently turned this monk’s body over, and you see the gashes through to the spine from bayonet or machete-like sword, and the rifle butt fractures of the skull that killed this soul. It is such a devastating set of injuries, this poor soul never had a chance, and likely died on his knees, the attack appears to be at the left shoulder and from ‘the coward’s direction,’ from the back.
I would just say that if you look, it would be alright to put your palm over the screen for a moment and just think the best blessing you have, across, across, across the oceans and let it fall like sweet rain over Burma.
warning: graphic image of injuries if you turn to the rest of the story.
May this soul, who was so brave, rest in peace.
May we, by proxy, carry the best of his thoughts
and the best of his deeds further into the world.
In this way, may he live forever.
dr.e
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 2:54 am and is filed under Buddhism, Than Shwe, Totalitarianism, Revolutions, Burma, Death, Crime, Tyranny, Communism, Freedom of the Press, Internet News Media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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