Monks Flee Violence of Burma and Settle in Bed-Stuy

In late 2007, U Pyinya Zawta grew out his beard, donned a wig and spectacles, and traveled overland from his home in Burma (also known as Union of Myanmar) to Thailand, expecting not to return.

He ended up in Bed-Stuy. The only clues of his presence in the historic Brooklyn neighborhood are a faded flag by his front door and a bumper sticker on a car parked at the curb that says, “Free Burma.”

Zawta is the senior monk at Metta Parami, a Burmese monastery established last August in a nondescript row house on Madison Street.

He shares the house with two other monks who, like Zawta, also are refugees -- U Gawsita and U Agga Nyana -- and a Burmese man named Aung Moe Win.

The three monks were leaders in the “Saffron Revolution” -- a series of anti-government protests that started in Burma in August 2007 and named for the colorful robes of the monks who lead them.

Before the revolt, Zawta spent ten years in prison for his political activities, where he was tortured. During the revolt, the police beat up Gawasita, and the army raided Agga Nyana’s monastery. Aung Moe Win moved to Thailand in 2004 to work for an outlawed Burmese magazine, so he’s also a refugee.

All four of the men left friends and family members behind, never expecting to see them again, knowing that the police would harass them continually.

In the documentary "Burma VJ," which recounts the revolt with footage smuggled from the country, Gawasita appears directing crowds of protesters through a megaphone. Zawta is a disembodied voice reporting through the phone to an activist in Thailand. Near the end, he tells the activist that he must “disappear into the countryside for a while.”

Zawta then was dropped off as a political refugee in Utica, New York, in 2008. Gawasita and Agga Nyana were dropped off in Utica as well, the following year. The three monks got together and began touring the States, telling their stories to university audiences.

During their first year in America, the monks’ activism brought them to New York City frequently, and in September of 2009, Zawta met a Burmese-American woman named May Ng at a rally in front of the UN building. Ng and her husband Stephan now donate the Bed-Stuy space to Metta Parami. Stephan drives the monks around a lot, and they call him their nanny.

The monks still wear their robes, though they’re actually maroon, not saffron. Their house is Spartan in furnishings, but spacious. It even has a back yard and a kitchen island.

Of 40 Burmese monks who live in America as refugees, Zawta, Gawasita and Agga Nyana are amongst only seven who have been able to remain monks. The rest have been forced to get jobs.

They opened their home monestary as a place for meditation and periodic ceremonies, but few people came. Similarly, the monks have had few takers for the rites of birth and death that they’re qualified to perform. 

Then, "Burma VJ" was nominated for an Oscar, and Zawta appeared on the red carpet last March in his robes.

There aren’t many Burmese in Bed-Stuy, Zawta says. They’re mostly concentrated in Fort Wayne, Indiana. But as long as the current Burmese regime survives, he cannot return home. He was sentenced in absentia to 18 years in prison.

Zawta says he doesn’t mind life here, dissimilar as it is to Rangoon. He came to Bed-Stuy to better position himself for activism, and he will remain here until he is successful.