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[Brainiac]

Bhutan seeks to curb sexual diseases among Buddhist monks

NEW DELHI (RNS) Health officials in the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan are making condoms available at all monastic schools in a bid to stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among young monks who are supposed to be celibate. “We are making condoms freely available everywhere, even in monastic schools and colleges,” Bhutan’s minister of health, Zangley Drukpa, said in a phone interview. The ministry, he added, has formed a special action group to deal with STDs in monasteries.

Warning signs of risky behavior among monks first appeared in 2009, when a report on risks and vulnerabilities of adolescents revealed that monks were engaging in “thigh sex” (in which a man uses another man’s clenched thighs for intercourse), according to the state-owned Kuensel daily.

The health ministry got concerned when a dozen monks — including a 12-year-old — were diagnosed with sexual transmitted diseases a year later, Kuensel reports. At least five monks are known to be HIV-positive, the youngest being 19.

The 2012 report of the U.N. agency focused on AIDS response and progress also noted cases of HIV among Bhutan’s monks. Bhutan’s Commission for the Monastic Affairs says stricter discipline is a solution. While corporal punishment is banned, monks told Kuensel it is still practiced. “It is believed the cane, the whip and the rosary represent the Bodhisattvas who personify wisdom, compassion and power, which are needed to discipline,” the commission’s health and religion coordinator, Tashi Galey, told the newspaper.

Psychiatrists suggest the spread of disease could be a result of mental stress. It is not uncommon for monks and nuns, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25, to visit psychiatrists. Even senior monks show symptoms of severe stress, especially when they are undergoing long periods of meditation, Dr. Damber Kumar Nirola told Kuensel. “About 70 to 80 percent of (senior) monks are obese, hypertensive and also suffer from back ache because of their sitting posture and sedentary lifestyle,” urologist Lotay Tshering told the paper.

Geography also plays a role. Most hilltop monastic schools lack recreational facilities. “Getting space for playgrounds is difficult, but we provide volley balls and badminton rackets,” the commission’s secretary, Karma Penjor, told Kuensel. Bhutan, a landlocked nation of about 700,000 people sandwiched between India and China, is the world’s only officially Buddhist country, and has about 388 monastic schools with 7,240 monks and 5,149 nuns.

[Brainiac]

There seems to be a rise in Buddhist extremism in some parts of the world...

The hardline Buddhists targeting Sri Lanka's Muslims

Four days after that article was published, this happened: Sri Lanka crowd attacks Muslim warehouse in Colombo

Also, things are happening in Burma/Myanmar: Religious 'radicals' driving Myanmar unrest: experts, Fanatical Buddhist Monk Saydaw Wirathu Calling for Boycott of Myanmar Muslims.


This tries to connect the dots: Taking old friends too seriously: Sri Lanka, Burma and Buddhist extremism.

I heard about the Burma situation a while ago, and it struck me that the attacks taking place there were more of a tit-for-tat thing. It will be disappointing if Sri Lanka really is looking for a new minority to pick on so soon after the end of its decades-long civil war with the Tamil community.

[Chrissie]

I think I read yesterday Muslims are attacking entire busloads of pilgrims going to Mayapur now, up to five at a time, because they outnumber Hindus in Bengladesh and want ISKCON for themselves after Westerners build it. What would George Harrison have said if he knew this during his concert for Bangladesh? Why can't these Islamics just be happy worshiping Allah? Don't they like Him? And the police do nothing to help the Hindus who ask for help. What can be done to remedy this situation? When will the ten thousand devotees needed to move into Mayapur finally move in? It's not that I am pro-ISKCON or anything, don't get me wrong.

[Dhyana]

How a store figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did

[Brainiac]

Religion and culture cannot justify discrimination against gays and lesbians, Ban warns

15 April 2013 – Pledging that “we must right these wrongs,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today denounced discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and declared that religion, culture and tradition can never be a justification for denying them their basic rights.

“Governments have a legal duty to protect everyone,” he said in a video message to the Oslo Conference on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, voicing outrage at the assault, imprisonment and murder of. LGBTs. “Some will oppose change. They may invoke culture, tradition or religion to defend the status quo.

“Such arguments have been used to try to justify slavery, child marriage, rape in marriage and female genital mutilation. I respect culture, tradition and religion – but they can never justify the denial of basic rights.”

Mr. Ban, who has frequently condemned violence and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, said the world should be outraged when people suffer discrimination because of who they love or how they look.

“This is one of the great, neglected human rights challenges of our time. We must right these wrongs,” he said, warning that far too many governments still refuse to acknowledge the injustice of homophobic violence and discrimination.

“My promise to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the human family is this: I am with you. I promise that as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I will denounce attacks against you, and I will keep pressing leaders for progress.”

The conference is jointly sponsored by Norway and South Africa and is one in a series of regional seminars scheduled to take place in France, Brazil and Nepal in March and April, and another is planned for Africa. The main purpose of these seminars is to gain better understanding of the specific human rights challenges for sexual minorities in each region, and to discuss how these challenges may best be overcome.

The seminars stem from a report issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights addressing the responsibility of states to end violence and discriminatory laws and practices based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

[ras]

NEW DELHI: Swami Kriyananda, among the last of direct disciples of the iconic Paramhansa Yogananda, passed away Sunday in Italy, his organization Ananda Sangha announced. He was 86.

A great admirer of India and its spiritual legacy, Kriyananda, who was born J Donald Walters, breathed his last at 12 noon India time at his home in Asissi, a spokesperson for Ananda Sangha said here..... http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/S...ow/19663179.cms

[Brainiac]

Special Report - In Myanmar, apartheid tactics against minority Muslims

"All we can give him is sedatives," said Maung Maung Hla, a former health ministry official who, despite lacking a medical degree, treats about 150 patients a day. The two doctors who once worked there haven't been seen in a month. Medical supplies stopped when they left, said Maung Maung Hla, a Muslim.

These trash-strewn camps represent the dark side of Myanmar's celebrated transition to democracy: apartheid-like policies segregating minority Muslims from the Buddhist majority. As communal violence spreads, nowhere are these practices more brutally enforced than around Sittwe.

[When tweeting this article, MJ Rosenberg commented: "I knew Christianity, Islam, Judaism & Hinduism had strong intolerant streaks. But Buddhism? Yup. No different."