No.13 - 05/2006
16 May 2006

Politics

Shan leader enters monkhood

Sai Fah, who was forced to resign from his party, Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), last month took up the Buddhist robes following his meeting with the Burmese commander of northern Shan State two weeks ago, reports Tai Touch from the border:

The meeting took place in the afternoon on 3 May at the Northeastern Region Command Headquarters in Lashio. The 56-year old Literature and cultural activist, whose life-long work at the grassroots level was one of the reasons the SNLD emerged second countrywide and first statewide in the 1990 elections, promptly went into monkhood right after the meeting. The details of the meeting has not been disclosed.

Reverend Sai Fah was seen again in Hsenwi, 32 miles north of Lashio, on 11 May, Burma's Visakha Buja Day, when the Sabbanyu Zoom Moeng Pagoda, the renovation efforts for which he had been spearheading since 2000, was inaugurated.

Sai Fah aka Sai Hla Pe, MP of Kyaukme constituency-1, was forced by the military authorities to resign on 7 April, as part of the military's countrywide crackdown on the Opposition.

File photo: S.H.A.N.
Sai Fah

Scan photo:
Sabbanyu Zoom Moeng Pagoda