Myanmar junta shuts AIDS monastery

Myanmar junta shuts AIDS monastery
YANGON (Reuters) - The Myanmar junta has shut down a Yangonmonastery which served as a hospice for HIV/AIDS patients andexpelled its monks, an opposition lawyer said on Friday.
"The authorities sealed Maggin monastery yesterdayafternoon" and expelled the monks, said Aung Thein of detaineddemocracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's National League forDemocracy.
"The authorities did not give them any documents and didnot say under which law the action was taken, so we cannot doanything to provide them with legal assistance," he added.
United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari criticized theclosure of the monastery, which was used as a hospice forHIV/AIDS sufferers and a refuge for provincial patients whocame to Yangon for medicines.
"Any actions that run counter to the spirit of nationalreconciliation, any action that will undermine the dialoguebetween the government and those who disagree with the policyof the government should be avoided," Gambari said in PhnomPenh.
"And I'd like to repeat that," he told reporters during avisit to Cambodia on a regional tour before returning to theformer Burma next month for more talks with the government andprobably Suu Kyi.
The abbots of Maggin monastery have long had the reputationof supporting pro-democracy campaigns, such as the one led bymonks in September which the junta crushed. The official deathtoll is 15, but diplomats believe it is much higher.
The suppression caused such international outrage the juntaallowed Gambari to visit and it appointed a senior general asintermediary with Suu Kyi, who has spent 12 of the past 18years under some form of detention.
Gambari, who expects to return to Myanmar in December, saidafter his last visit he had received assurances the crackdownwould stop.
But arrests have continued, raising doubts about thejunta's sincerity in beginning a real dialogue with theopposition.
"We get reports almost on a daily basis of people beingpicked up," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar,told reporters in Bangkok.
"It's hard to see how shutting monasteries, continuing toarrest people and continued restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi,how this is progress," Villarosa said.
Myanmar state media say all but 91 of the nearly 3,000people arrested in the crackdown were released and monks fromraided monasteries were sent home.
Villarosa said she believed "a considerable number" ofmonks had been arrested and their whereabouts were unknown.
"It's the big question out there. Where are all the monks?"
(Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler in Bangkok; EkMadra in Phnom Penh)