Islam allows the dissimulation of faith in case of mortal danger, but seven emigrants from Bangladesh have gone one step further. In reality, thousands of steps, since they have crossed Thailand in sandals from north to south, pretending to be Buddhist monks. Their objective, which was frustrated last Saturday, was to reach the border with Malaysia.
These seven men, who had been tonsured and covered themselves with a simple orange tunic, were intercepted almost at the end of their journey, in the southern province of Songhkla, where a third of the population is, in fact, Muslim.
In the extreme south of Thailand there is an armed conflict with secessionist groups of Malay ethnicity and Islamic religion, which has caused thousands of deaths in the last twenty years. This situation results in much stricter security controls than in the rest of the kingdom.
However, officially, the false monks would have been detected by an anonymous citizen. He would have been suspicious, not because of the bearing of the orange robe - surprisingly well worn - but because of the travel bags they were carrying, when Buddhist monks do not have possessions. Likewise, although they had shaved their heads, it seems that something in their behavior gave them away, beyond their features and language.
The complaint led the police to open their bags and find that they contained street clothes, which they were supposedly going to put on to enter Malaysia illegally.
After finding that they were unable to document or prove their status as monks, the police took them to Wat Khok Saman Khun, the dragon temple in Hat Yai, the largest city in the province. After shedding their habit and renouncing their non-existent monastic life, the group was taken to a dungeon until their next deportation to Bangladesh.
According to the police, the immigrants entered Thailand irregularly through Mae Sot, in the northwest of the country, which is also a transit point for many undocumented Burmese. It is unknown how they crossed from Bangladesh to Burma, supposedly undetected, although there are hundreds of thousands of people of Bengali origin in that country.
There, those who have been settled in the border province of Arracán for decades call themselves Rohingya, although for the military junta they continue to be Bengalis and for the 135 indigenous ethnic groups of Burma they have never stopped being "kalas", brown people.
What is certain is that in Burma they did not need to wear any Buddhist robes, which are also crimson there, instead of saffron (as in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos).
The camouflage of the Bangladeshis - of whom only the name of the one who acted as guide has been revealed - has left the Thais stunned. The Buddhist clergy are the object of special respect in Thailand and the modern Bangkok skyline, for example, has seats reserved for the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women... and monks. So, during their long visa-free journey, the Bangladeshis must have received a large number of obeisances, duly reciprocated with their blessings.
