Thailand’s Buddhist temples have long been tainted with allegations of greed, corruption, sex, murder and child abuse, while monks, sworn to lives of abstinence, have often been caught living flashy lifestyles.
However, while there were previously seen as untouchable, the Thai military government over the past month has suddenly moved to crack down on corruption in temples, arresting six of the nation’s most high-profile monks.
It is the military junta’s boldest move toward cleaning up the Sangha, the name of the Thai Buddhist order, and among the six arrested are several elderly monks on the Sangha supreme council, the nation’s Buddhist governing body.
Photo: Reuters
Two senior abbots at Bangkok’s famous Golden Mount temple were also among those arrested, but most surprising was the arrest of Phra Buddha Issara, a right-wing firebrand monk known both for his political activism and his alleged ties to Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. Both serve in the Queen’s Guard military unit, although Prayuth now denies any connection to Issara.
“The arrest of these monks is clearly designed to place the state in control over any monks who might stray from loyalty to the junta, especially as we are approaching elections,” said Paul Chambers, a lecturer at Naresuan University who specializes in Thai politics. “This is their way of demonstrating that the state is really above the Buddhist Sangha.”
While the military junta have long pledged to stamp out corruption, the timing of the four temple raids has been seen as significant and politically motivated.
Prayuth’s government is under greater pressure than ever to follow through on its promise to call elections in February next year, and cleaning up corruption in temples is perceived as a canny move that would play well to the electorate.
The junta’s past attempts to exert its authority over the temples have not proved successful. In February last year, it raided the popular Dhammakaya temple, looking for its spiritual leader Phra Dhammachayo on allegations he had embezzled US$37 million of temple donations.
The temple’s well-known allegiances to former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is despised by the military and was toppled in a military coup in 2006, was also perceived as a motive of the raid.
However, Dhammachayo eluded arrest and there was a backlash against the military government for being too heavy-handed in the raid, which saw 4,000 officers descend on the temple for three weeks.
“After the siege of the Dhammakaya temple, people really started to look askance at what the military was doing to the monks and question their motives, and it really did damage to Prayuth’s reputation,” Chambers said. “So these new arrests might be designed to give the military a more popular image and make people forget about the failed mission last year.”
After the failure of the Dhammakaya siege, the junta in March last year announced that it was drafting a law that would significantly weaken the Sangha council. It has not yet presented it to the legislature, but the arrests could be laying the groundwork for the legislation.
Perhaps the most surprising of the recent arrests was Buddha Issara, who was formally stripped of his position as a monk and sent to Bangkok remand prison to await trial on charges of robbery, forgery and illegal detention of officials during the protests in 2013 and 2014, prior to the coup.
Issara had long been a advocate for reform in Buddhism and in August last year condemned the military junta for not acting on its promise to clean up the temples.
The arrest of Issara has been perceived as a sign that either the junta fears he is too much of a loose canon politically or that the junta is attempting to prove itself as ethical and deserving of political longevity to the Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who inherited the throne last year.
Thailand has seen a rare upsurge in protests and demonstrations, and the arrests have also been seen as the junta giving the monks a strong signal of what would happen if they do not toe the line politically, especially the large number who still have loyalty to the pro-Thaksin Red Shirt movement.
Investigations are still ongoing and it is thought there are to be more arrests.
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