Myanmar Buddhists
protest raid on scandal-hit Thai temple
February 25, 2017 The
News International
YANGON: Myanmar Buddhist
nationalists rallied outside the Thai embassy in Yangon on Friday
to condemn the Thai government’s siege of the controversial
Dhammakaya temple as officers search for an elderly monk accused of
massive embezzlement.
The sprawling Bangkok temple, which houses the
headquarters of the breakaway Dhammakaya sect, has been flooded
this week with thousands of police and soldiers hunting for its
72-year-old former abbot Phra Dhammachayo.
The elderly monk, who is accused of
money-laundering and accepting millions of dollars of embezzled
funds, is believed to be hiding inside the temple’s labyrinthine
complex on the city’s outskirts.
Scenes of security officers scuffling with
monks trying to block their search have ricocheted across the web
this week raising alarm in neighbouring Myanmar, another devoutly
Buddhist country.
On Friday more than a hundred people,
including dozens of robe-clad monks, gathered waving Buddhist and
national flags and chanting: "May the teachings of the Buddha and
Dhammakaya temple stay alive forever."
"If the monastery is destroyed, the Buddhist
religion will disappear in Thailand," protesting monk Thu Mingala
told AFP.
Earlier the group handed the embassy a letter
addressed to Thai junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha saying they were
"worried and deeply saddened" by the raid.
The show of solidarity came as Thai police on
Friday ordered mobile operators to cut off internet signals around
the temple compound to prevent monks and disciples from spreading
"false information" about the raid.
While Dhammakaya is Thailand’s largest and
richest temple, it is far from mainstream and has drawn ire from
conservative Buddhists for years.
Critics accuse the sect of promoting a
pay-your-way to nirvana philosophy and encouraging a cult-like
devotion to Phra Dhammachayo, who founded the temple in
1970.
Temple officials say the sect’s sole focus is
teaching meditation and insist the former abbot is
innocent.
They have also denied any links with Myanmar’s
hardline Buddhist nationalists, who have stoked their own
controversy in recent years with virulently anti-Muslim
rhetoric.
Last year Dhammakaya raised eyebrows after
welcoming Myanmar’s firebrand preacher Wirathu, the face of the
ultra-nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement, to the temple for a religious
ceremony.
He was reportedly given an World Buddhist
Outstanding Leader Award at the event, which a Dhammakaya spokesman
says the temple played no part in.
"There is no link with Ma Ba Tha... the
monastic members of Ma Ba Tha expressed their concern as they saw
the action of the Thai government on Thai Buddhists and monks," the
spokesman told AFP by email.
On Thursday Wirathu led a prayer session and
protest at the Mahamuni Pagoda in Mandalay to condemn the Thai
government’s raid on the Dhammakhaya temple, which he claimed on
Facebook was attended by 200 people.