By Special Arrangement with The Buddhist Channel*
YANGON – Myanmar’s retired junta General Thein Sein has become a monk. He has been ordained as U Thandi Dhamma. According to reliable sources, it was the well known Dhamma teacher Dr. Ashin Nyanissara or better known as Sitagu Sayadaw who implored him to take up monkhood.
Thein Sein is widely regarded as the junta head who opened up Myanmar. After taking over from military dictator Senior General Than Shwe in 2011, he was expected to carry on as an opaque and isolationist ruler, much like his feared predecessor. After all, in 1998 he was personally named by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar for directly ordering his soldiers to commit human rights abuses.
Records have indicated that his history in brutality was no less than previous junta heads, such as Ne Win and Than Shwe.
Jade Industry Key to Democratic Reform in Myanmar
This article is the third in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.
SINGAPORE (IDN | Lotus News Features) – As a new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi takes over in Myanmar this month (March), reforming the country’s jade mining industry and ensuring that the benefits flow to the people and the national coffers would be the litmus test of its democratic credentials.
Many people tend to conclude that having a free and fair multi-party election and a long serving government being overthrown by the peoples’ verdict is the ultimate test of a country’s flowering of democracy. But, in today’s globalized economic system that by itself is not enough.