Senior monk critical of Myanmar coup shot dead by junta

Updated at 7:20 pm Myanmar Time One of Myanmar’s most senior Buddhist monks, who publicly denounced the country’s military coup in 2021, was shot and killed at a police checkpoint near Mandalay on Wednesday. According to sources close to the victim, the incident occurred at around 1:30pm as the vehicle that Ashin Munindra Bhivamsa, 78, was travelling in failed to stop at the checkpoint. A fellow monk and the car’s driver also sustained injuries, the sources reported. The monks were driving west from Mandalay International Airport in Tada-U Township when police opened fire on them on a road between the villages of Myothar and Pangyi-Kamma in Ngazun Township, about 45 miles southwest of Mandalay. Ashin Munindra was the abbot of the important Win Namitta Monastery in the city of Bago and a central executive member of Shwegyin, the second-largest and most respected sect of Myanmar’s Theravada Buddhist order. He was also previously one of the 47 members of the State Saṅgha Maha Nayaka Committee, a government-appointed body of high-ranking Buddhist abbots. The regime was quick to blame the incident on resistance forces active in the area, claiming in state media reports that the car was forced off the road during a clash triggered by a mine planted by “PDF terrorists.” However, a surviving monk has publicly alleged that the attackers were members of the junta's security forces. This assertion was made during a gathering of Buddhist monks on Thursday evening, broadcast live on Facebook, directly challenging the junta's official account. Ashin Gunikar Bhivamsa, who was also in the car and sustained minor head injuries, recounted his experience. He stated that after the shooting ceased and their vehicle came to a stop off the road, he confronted a group of junta soldiers and officers. "I asked them, 'How could you be so cruel?'" he recounted. "They replied, 'We didn't know you were monks. Your car's windows were closed, and we mistook it for an enemy vehicle.'" The soldiers confiscated mobile phones from both him and the driver, who had lost three fingers in the attack. "My robes were soaked in blood, and Ashin Munidra was already deceased," Ashin Gunikar Bhivamsa continued, addressing the gathered monks at Win Nimitta Monastery in Bago. According to the monk, gunfire had been directed at their car seven or eight times during the incident. Subsequently, he was taken to the military headquarters in Mandalay's old palace and pressured to provide an account of the incident that aligned with the junta's narrative. An internal police report obtained by Myanmar Now corroborated the monk's version of events. It detailed a junta unit led by Major Moe Min Oo and a militia group retreating in military trucks after being ambushed by an anti-junta resistance group in Ngazun township. They encountered the monks' vehicle, a Toyota Hilux Surf with closed windows, in violation of post-coup regulations mandating open windows on Myanmar highways. The soldiers then opened fire, only to discover the occupants were senior Buddhist monks. "This is truly heart-wrenching," Ashin Gunikar Bhivamsa concluded his account to the gathered monks. The video has since been removed from Facebook but an archive is on file with Myanmar Now. A leaked report from the regime’s Ministry of Religious Affairs has also confirmed that the victims were shot by police, and that one of them was a former member of the State Saṅgha Maha Nayaka Committee. Ministry officials have declined to answer questions about the leaked document, which has been circulating widely on social media. Resistance sources in Mandalay said there have been no recent armed clashes in Ngazun Township, where the incident occurred, but anti-regime groups affiliated with the publicly-mandated National Unity Government (NUG) are known to be operating in the area. A monk looks at the body of Ashin Munindra at his monastery in Bago on June 20 (Win Namitta Monastery / Facebook) The country has been mired in civil war since the military toppled the ruling civilian government and launched a coup in 2021. The death of Ashin Munindra sent shock waves through Myanmar’s monastic order, or Sangha, large sections of which have chosen to remain neutral in the ongoing conflict. Besides his senior position in the Shwegyin sect, Ashin Munindra was also regarded as a pre-eminent scholar of Pali, the ancient Indian language primarily used for the study of Buddhism. He authored a number of books on the metaphysical aspects of Buddhism, known as the Abhidhamma, as well as on the Vinaya, a major text governing monastic precepts. Although he was never associated with politics, in the aftermath of the 2021 coup, he took the rare step of joining other senior abbots in issuing a statement that said the military takeover had destroyed the future of the country and its younger generation. His body was transported back to his monastery in Bago on Wednesday evening, and preparations are currently being made there for his funeral. “This is really tragic news,” said Tin Oo, a former parliamentarian and close disciple of the monk. “During his 48 years in monastic life, he devoted himself to study and the dissemination of Buddhist teachings. He did not care much for anything else. We had a high regard for his commitment to morality,” said Tin Oo, who is also a military commander of NUG-led forces operating in Bago. Ashin Pyinnyasara Linkara, a monk and respected Buddhist scholar from Mandalay who is currently living in resistance-controlled areas of Sagaing Region, said that Ashin Munindra’s death was not just a great loss to the study of Buddhism, but could also be seen as a direct consequence of the coup. “This is nothing but the result of military dictator Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s foolish acts,” he said, adding that more monks should be speaking out against the regime. “We mourn the news, but we are uncomfortable with the fact that many senior Buddhist monks keep aloof from the tragic state of the country. By this I mean the military has been torching villages and raining down 500-lb bombs on the civilian population, brutally killing so many people.”

Senior monk critical of Myanmar coup shot dead by junta

Junta-controlled state media was quick to blame the monk’s death on resistance forces, saying he had been killed in the crossfire of a clash with “PDF terrorists”

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