Rev. Danny Fisher

Via the U.S. Campaign for Burma: the Washington Post‘s Foreign Service reports on reconstruction and relief efforts in and around Bogalay, Burma. Here’s the lead:

Two months after a cyclone savaged the fertile Irrawaddy Delta, in Burma’s southwest, the bones of drowning victims still clutter the muddy banks of waterways.

One bamboo stick at a time, survivors in hundreds of flattened villages are struggling to rebuild their lives. For shelter, they squeeze several families into a single tent. For drinking water, they collect monsoon rains that trickle off tarpaulin roof coverings into buckets or salvaged ceramic vases. For food, they cook communal meals with rice, beans and oil from handouts. Sometimes it is spoiled.

On a recent visit, one village looked as if it had been carpet-bombed, a cratered landscape of muddy pools, debris and the remains of water buffaloes. A few hundred feet away, villagers sawed and hammered at planks salvaged from the wreckage. A teenage boy in an oversize shirt donated by a Buddhist monastery picked through piles of smashed wood.

“To work is to be busy, and to be busy helps them forget,” said Soe, the village leader.

Read the whole piece here.

Speaking in Tokyo recently, George W. Bush made it clear that he will not join other world leaders in boycotting the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing over gross human rights abuses in the country and recent crackdowns on Tibetan protestors (see video below). Now that he has made this decision, I strongly encourage him to take Nicholas D. Kristof‘s advice:

If President Bush attends the ceremonies…he should balance that with a day trip to a Tibetan area. Such a visit would underscore American concern, even if the Chinese trot out fake monks to express fake contentment with fake freedom.

President Bush and other Western leaders should also continue to consult with the Dalai Lama, even though this infuriates Beijing. The Dalai Lama is the last, best hope for reaching an agreement that would resolve the dispute over Tibet forever. He accepts autonomy, rather than independence, and he has the moral authority to persuade Tibetans to accept a deal.

The worldwide Engaged Buddhist movement has just lost one of its great heroes in the Most Ven. Thich Huyen Quang, head of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. He died yesterday at his monastery in central Binh Dinh province at age 89. His and the U.B.C.V.’s resistance to unjust government rule resulted in him “spending over half his life in prison, internal exile or under house arrest under a succession of political regimes” (according to a statement by the International Buddhist information bureau).

Here is his full obituary from the Agence France-Presse:

Thich Huyen Quang, the head of the Vietnamese Buddhist movement that has refused to come under communist government control, died on Saturday aged 87, his supporters said in a statement from Paris.

“Most Venerable Thich Huyen Quang, 4th Supreme Patriarch of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), passed away today at the Nguyen Thieu monastery,” said the International Buddhist Information Bureau.

He died peacefully at his monastery in central Binh Dinh province, where he had returned from hospital Friday at his own request after spending more than a month in intensive care for heart, lung and kidney ailments, the bureau said.

His death was announced by the UBCV’s deputy leader Thich Quang Do, the presumed successor, who has like Quang spent decades under house arrest and police surveillance, and who led a morning prayer ceremony for Quang.

The Paris-based bureau, the international communications arm of the UBCV, called Quang “one of Vietnam’s most loved and respected spiritual leaders, and also a determined opponent of tyranny in all its forms.”

“For his uncompromising determination to stand firm, he paid a high price, spending over half his life in prison, internal exile or under house arrest under a succession of political regimes,” the statement said.

Quang, like his deputy Do, had “waged three decades of peaceful opposition to the communist regime, becoming a symbol of the non-violent Buddhist movement for religious freedom and human rights,” the group said.

“But he was also a great peacemaker and a man of dialogue, seeking every opportunity towards harmony and the healing of divisions in a Vietnam torn by war and conflicting ideologies.”

The UBCV said it planned to hold Quang’s funeral at the Nguyen Thieu monastery at 7:00 am on Friday, July 11 — defying government plans for an official funeral announced in the state-controlled media last week.

Quang’s imminent death in recent days sharply raised tensions between the one-party government and UBCV monks and supporters who had travelled to see Quang at the Quy Nhon hospital.

The state-controlled Vietnam News Agency (VNA) on Friday attacked Do and other UBCV figures as “extremist elements disguised as Buddhist monks who have been working to sabotage the Vietnamese state.”

The VNA article charged that “a number of extremists are devising a plot to use the serious health condition of a senior Buddhist monk to bring out their illegal organisation called ‘Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam’.”

It listed UBCV figures Do along with Thich Khong Tanh, Vien Dinh “and their henchmen” as the “extremist elements” working to undermine the government.

The report, which did not mention Quang’s decades of dissent, also said that the state-sponsored Buddhist church had discussed “preparations for a solemn Buddhist funeral in case Most Venerable Quang dies.”

Paris-based UBCV spokesman Vo Van Ai, in a statement Friday, on the eve of Quang’s death, said Do had visited his “leader and lifelong friend, hoping that his prayers, presence and care could help Thich Huyen Quang to recover.”

“Yet whilst Thich Quang Do and the UBCV pray for the patriarch’s life, Hanoi is already planning for his death, and cynically seeking to draw political capital from it by imposing a state-organised funeral.”

I meant to post this on Aung San Suu Kyi‘s 63rd birthday, but I was traveling at the time and it slipped my mind. I just remembered, and decided that it’s never too late to honor the woman Burmese affectionately call “the Lady.” It’s the video for the song “Walk On” by U2. The band has said that the song was inspired by Suu Kyi, and it is dedicated to her in the liner notes of their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Enjoy.

Here are a few more stories to read, courtesy of the U.S. Campaign for Burma: