Monk on the run plans his return

The venerable monk Loun Savath sits with residents threatened with eviction from the Boeung Kak lake area during a demonstration outside City Hall last month in Phnom Penh. (Photo by: Sreng Meng Srun)

07 January Hochimonk Tep Vong, a Hanoi stooge

Tuesday, 19 April 2011
May Titthara and James O’Toole
The Phnom Penh Post

... Phon Davy, director of the municipal cults and religions department, said Loun Savath had in fact drawn the ire of Tep Vong, Cambodia’s highest-ranking monk.


“[Loun Savath] has violated the rules to such an extent that the Great Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia, Tep Vong, issued a warning letter to ban all monks from joining protests,” Phon Davy said.

At protests staged by the embattled residents of the Boeung Kak lakeside against their impending eviction, Loun Savath cuts a distinctive figure. The 31-year-old is a tall man with a round face and a wide smile, but more than anything else, it is his orange robes that stand out from the crowd.

The venerable monk has served primarily as an observer of the protests, yet this limited role has been enough to draw harassment from local authorities and religious officials. Police, he says, have threatened him with arrest on multiple occasions, and last month, after being followed back to his home at the capital’s Wat Ounalom by a police vehicle, he fled Phnom Penh for fear of arrest.

He will not be out of action for long, however. Speaking by phone yesterday from Siem Reap province, Loun Savath said he planned to return to Wat Ounalom next week, resuming a push for social justice from which many members of the monkhood have been conspicuously absent.