BANGKOK: More than 30 Thai monks have been defrocked for illegal drug use, an official said yesterday in the latest scandal to hit the kingdom’s Buddhist clergy.
One abbot was charged with drug trafficking after urine tests showed the 31 monks - from several dozen monasteries in the Ban Mo district of Saraburi province - had used methamphetamine.
Those who undergo rehabilitation and stop using drugs will be allowed to re-enter the monkhood, local official said.
Thailand’s Buddhist clergy has been hit by a series of scandals, with local media reporting cases of drug-taking, drinking, gambling and visiting prostitutes.
Jakarta blocks terrorist video
JAKARTA: Indonesian government has blocked access to a YouTube video of the country’s most wanted militant, Santoso, who challenged his followers to continue battling counter-terrorism officers, police said. National police spokesman Brigadier General Ronny Sompie said yesterday that the move was taken to ensure public order.
Santoso, the commander of a group calling itself Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT), is wanted for running a militant training camp in Poso in central Sulawesi, whose members killed two cops who were investigating it in October.
In the Al Qaeda style YouTube video, he praised fellow radicals in Poso who had launched several attacks on the local police station, as well as on the officers.
Japan’s gangster mag published
TOKYO: Japan’s biggest yakuza organised crime group has published a magazine for its members that includes a poetry page and senior gangsters’ fishing diaries, reports said yesterday.
The eight-page publication has been distributed among the Yamaguchi-gumi, a sprawling syndicate believed to have about 27,700 members, in a bid to strengthen unity in the group, the daily Sankei Shimbun reported. The front page of the “Yamaguchi-gumi Shinpo” (newsletter) carries a first person piece by the group’s don, Kenichi Shinoda, instructing younger members in the values and disciplines they should observe, the Sankei said.
The magazine, which is not being made publicly available, has an entertainment section detailing fishing trips by top officials, along with satirical haiku.
The gangs, which are not illegal, have historically been tolerated by the authorities, although there are periodic clampdowns on some of their less savoury activities.
AGENCIES
