Monk Calm Amid Controversy

Buddhist monk Phra Winai La’Ongusuwan sat serenely beneath a spreading apricot tree at his hilltop monastery and explained how he has retained his composure during these difficult years.

“Nature is a good teacher if we observe,” Winai said softly. “The tree doesn’t lie to us. A tree gives and gives even though it may suffer in winter. The tree never complains.”

The 45-year-old “forest monk” might be forgiven if he did a little complaining.

The governmental, religious and military leadership in his native Thailand has been increasingly pursuing Winai with charges of criminality and heresy since the early 1990s.

Thai officials attempted repeatedly, sometimes at gunpoint, to block him from addressing his many followers and then filed criminal charges that could have sent him to prison. This in a country that Amnesty International alleges is notorious for brutality toward political prisoners.

After he fled to the United States in 1995, the U.S. government, urged on by the Thai government, launched a vigorous effort to deport Winai as an undesirable.

The U.S. government has persisted despite protestations from his followers that Winai is marked for death by the Thai military for his criticism of the 1991 coup and his continuing rebuke of corruption.

In June, a U.S. immigration judge in San Diego granted Winai’s plea for political asylum. The judge agreed that Winai faces probable persecution for his religious and political beliefs should he be forced to return to Thailand.

But now, for reasons that it will not explain, the U.S. government is appealing the judge’s ruling. And the Thai government is redoubling its efforts to have Winai extradited on a charge of forging an immigration document during his desperate trek from Thailand to Cambodia and then the United States.

An earlier request to extradite Winai on charges of insulting church and government leaders and wearing his monk’s robes was turned down by U.S. prosecutors because there are no similar crimes in this country.

Peter Schey, a Los Angeles international human rights attorney representing Winai, accuses the U.S. government of being willing to sacrifice Winai in order to maintain friendly ties to the newly restored civilian government in Thailand.

“It is a major blow to international justice when the U.S. government allows itself to be manipulated by a government well known for corruption, brutality, involvement in illicit activities and for having only a tenuous grip on democracy,” Schey said. “This is being done strictly for strategic foreign policy reasons.”

Attorneys for the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service declined to discuss Winai’s case prior to the official appeal. But a spokesman for the State Department was careful to say that the department does not think that the government in Bangkok is controlled by the military.

“To call the government military controlled is not an accurate statement although there are members of the government who are still in the military,” the spokesman said.

What is accurate is that Thailand is an increasingly important trade partner and military ally for the United States in Southeast Asia, although the relationship has sometimes been rocky, particularly after the democratically elected government was overthrown and during tough negotiations over tariffs and widespread violations of pharmaceutical patents.

The United States is pledged to defend Thailand. In May, the two countries completed a joint military exercise, Cobra Gold ‘97, in which 5,000 American troops and 20,000 Thai troops conducted amphibious, airborne and live fire training along Thailand’s western border with Myanmar.

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Richard Cohen, a Buddhism scholar at UC San Diego, said he is not familiar with the particulars of Winai’s case but that the scenario of harassment alleged by Winai--and accepted by the immigration judge as backed by compelling fact--fits what has happened to other Buddhist monks in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka in recent years.

As monks in those countries have shifted from Buddhism’s traditional policy of noninvolvement in secular politics, they have been harassed and jailed by the military and criticized by Buddhist leaders eager to stay in the government’s good graces, Cohen said. In Thailand, it is against the law for monks to express political views.

Another key element of Winai’s story also seems to conform to a pattern of what has happened to monks who become troublesome to authorities, Cohen said. It is common for their enemies to attempt to discredit them by spreading tales that a monk has violated his vow of celibacy.

“This tradition goes back to the Buddha himself who, after he became influential, was confronted by a woman who put a pillow under her robe and accused him publicly of making her pregnant,” Cohen said. “The story says that mice chewed on the robe’s drawstring, the pillow dropped, the earth opened up and the woman plunged down to hell.”

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Buddhist leaders in Thailand charged Winai with breaking his celibacy, including with prostitutes. A monastic trial was held, but the charges were not proved.

Winai, who has established a monastery in a breezy California ranch-style home in this hilly, orchard-filled community 45 miles north of San Diego, said he takes strength from the travails of others who have run afoul of authority.

“Buddha, Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi all inspire me to confront the obstacles before me,” he said between sips of icy Thai coffee.

The appeal of the asylum decision will be Round 3 in the legal wrangling between Winai and the U.S. government. Initially he was charged by the U.S. attorney’s office with felony immigration fraud for using a phony passport to reach this country.

After being kept in an INS lockup in El Centro for weeks, Winai’s attorneys struck a plea bargain with prosecutors. Rather than a prison sentence, Winai was sentenced to spend 300 hours teaching Buddhism to community groups.

Winai has spoken to a variety of small gatherings, including in Tustin and Moreno Valley, about the precepts of Buddha, which include a steadfast refusal to return anger with anger, even if faced with persecution.

“I miss my homeland,” he said, “but if I can share peace, it is OK.”

At his retreat, made available to him by American followers, Winai is surrounded by two dozen lesser monks, nuns and lay followers, many from Thailand but some from Australia and this country.

Winai spends his days meditating, praying and teaching tai chi and yoga. The monks and nuns are duplicating his lectures on audio cassettes; a World Wide Web site is being designed. The group shares the property with malamute dogs named Lion and Tiger and a cat named Jenny; the swimming pool is used as a fish pond.

On the weekends, followers from throughout Southern California venture to the home-turned-monastery to sit at Winai’s feet. Some help pick the fruit from the 13 acres of orchards that surround the home.

In Thailand, Winai’s forest retreats attracted hundreds of monks and thousands of followers. Some of his marches covered hundreds of miles and took days.

In his early 20s, Winai worked in a hotel but quit to become a devotee of yoga, living in mountainous solitude. He wore shoulder-length hair, a beard and beads.

“I was a hippie,” Winai jokes, “a happy hippie.”

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He had a vision of an old man carrying a crystal and a rose and telling him to become a monk. After rigorous study, he was ordained in 1974.

Unlike most monks, Winai was unusually well-traveled, with trips to Europe, Australia (where he has a monastery outside Sydney) and the United States. The frequency of his travels could suggest one reason the Thai government and its supporters are eager to see him stand trial.

“The scandal has already tarnished Buddhism,” a critic wrote in June to a newspaper in Thailand. “The damage has been done. It was our own stupidity that let Winai out of the country.”

The decision on whether to bow to Thai demands to extradite Winai so he can stand trial rests, as do all extradition requests, with the secretary of state or the deputy secretary of state.

The INS appeal of the June 19 decision by Immigration Judge Rico J. Bartolomei to grant Winai asylum will be heard by a Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va. From there, the case could go to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases in the western United States, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“They made me into a big man, very important,” Winai said of his enemies in Thailand. “But I am not. I am a very simple man.”