Police in Thailand who spent three days in an orderly but unsuccessful search of a vast Buddhist temple for a prominent monk accused of financial wrongdoing kept up the pressure Sunday, sending fresh forces to confront devotees and monks at the compound’s gates.

Around 3,000 police had surrounded the Dhammakaya sect temple north of Bangkok from Thursday through Saturday, while smaller squads searched for its chief, Phra Dhammajayo, who is accused of accepting $40 million in embezzled money.

Both security forces and Dhammajayo’s followers gathered in growing numbers at the temple on Sunday after the Department of Special Investigation – Thailand’s FBI – ordered all people not residing there to leave. Numbers on both sides were difficult to estimate.

Sunday’s standoff ended peacefully, with the police forces withdrawing shortly after dark.

Dhammajayo has been charged with money-laundering and receiving stolen property. His defenders say he did not know the money was tainted.

Some devotees believe his legal troubles are politically motivated because the temple and its followers are seen as supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in a 2006 military coup. Thailand had another coup in 2014 and currently has a military government.

The police are operating under an emergency order issued Thursday by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha allowing them to shortcut normal legal procedures with broad powers to search property and arrest people.

They have sought to block people from entering the temple, but many seemed to have gotten through on Sunday after senior monks issued statements suggesting the temple was under threat.

Police also issued summonses for more than a dozen senior monks, including Dhammajayo – who has not been seen in public for months – to present themselves at the local police station.

“Our hearts break because we love Buddhism. We can die, but Buddhism, never,” said Dhammakaya devotee Manoj Hemprommaraj. “We will protect our temple, (even) if we die.”
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Two members of Myanmar’s security forces were injured in a clash with militants on the troubled Rakhine State border with Bangladesh, Myanmar state counselor’s office said, casting doubt on the government’s claim that the region had stabilized.

The government last week said the situation in northern Rakhine had stabilized and that it had ended a four-month security crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.

The security operation had been under way since nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border October 9. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have since fled to Bangladesh, according to U.N. estimates.

The United Nations has said the security crackdown may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

Border clash

Two soldiers were wounded in a five-minute clash with an armed group on the border with Bangladesh Friday afternoon, the State Counselor’s said in a statement late Saturday.

“The forces providing security forces to workers preparing border fence between the Mile Post 56 and 57 in Buthidaung township were attacked by about 30 unidentified armed men in black uniforms positioned on hills in Bangladeshi side,” the statement said, adding the armed men withdrew after security forces returned fire.

The security forces were still gathering information to identify how many members from the armed group were injured or killed during the clash, the office said in the short statement.

Bangladesh border guards could not immediately be contacted. Myanmar State Counselor’s Office and military did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

October attacks

Myanmar’s government blamed Rohingyas supported by foreign militants for the October 9 attacks on police, but has issued scant information about the assailants it called “terrorists.”

A group of Rohingya Muslims involved in the October attacks is headed by people with links to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the International Crisis Group said in a report last year.

The government, led Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, including mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims, and said the operation was a lawful counterinsurgency campaign.

The violence has renewed international criticism that the Myanmar leader has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority, many of whom live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar.

Rohingya Muslims have faced discrimination in Myanmar for generations. They are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and many entitled only to limited rights. 
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Thai police ordered thousands of worshippers to leave the country’s biggest Buddhist temple Sunday so it can intensify its search for its former abbot, who is wanted on money-laundering charges.

Thailand’s ruling junta used a special emergency law Thursday to let police explore the scandal-hit Dhammakaya Temple after months of failing to persuade it to hand over Phra Dhammachayo.

On Sunday, police said that all nonresidents must vacate the premises to expedite the search of the 400 hectare (1,000 acre) facility because temple activities were hindering police.

Monks who live within the temple grounds were ordered to congregate at an exit point and not interfere with the investigation.

“We are conducting these steps so that we can conduct the search process as quickly as possible so that we can return the temple grounds to the worshippers,” Woranan Srilam of the Department for Special Investigation told Reuters.

Rare defiance of military

The temple has been a rare institution in defying the military government. Opposition from political parties and activists has largely been silenced since a coup in 2014.

Phra Dhammachayo faces charges of conspiracy to launder money and receive stolen goods, as well as taking over land unlawfully to build meditation centers. His aides dismiss the accusations as politically motivated.

“This is an abuse of power by the junta who should not interfere on religious matters,” temple spokesman and senior monk Phra Pasura Dantamano told Reuters.

“We have always been willing to negotiate and accommodate the authorities but this is too much.”

13,000 inside temple

Around 13,000 people were inside the temple as of Sunday morning, according to Dantamano, who said that the temple would have to comply with the request to evacuate.

Although the temple has no overt political affiliation, the abbot is widely believed to have had links with populist former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in 2006. A government led by Thaksin’s sister was toppled by the army in 2014.

The Dhammakaya Temple’s brasher approach to winning adherents jars on conservatives, who say it exploits its followers and uses religion to make money. The temple says it is as committed to Buddhist values as anyone else. 
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Investigators are looking for four North Korean men who flew out of Malaysia the same day Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean ruler’s outcast half brother, was apparently poisoned at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian police said Sunday.

Since Kim’s death last week, authorities have been trying to piece together details of what appeared to be an assassination. Malaysian police have so far arrested four people carrying IDs from North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. 

Four suspects at large 

On Sunday, the Deputy National Police Chief of Malaysia, Noor Rashid Ibrahim, said four other suspects were on the run. He said the men were North Korean and had flown out of the country last Monday, when Kim died.

“I am not going disclose where they are,” he told a room packed with journalists. Interpol was helping with the investigation, he said.

Noor Rashid showed photographs of the four North Korean men police were trying to track down. They were traveling on regular, not diplomatic, passports and are ages 33, 34, 55 and 57.

He also said there was a fifth North Korean man whom authorities wanted to question. 

Autopsy results in days  

Kim Jong Nam was waiting for his flight home to Macau when, authorities say, he was set upon by two women. He sought help at a customer service desk and said “two unidentified women had swabbed or had wiped his face with a liquid and that he felt dizzy,” Noor Rashid said Sunday.

Kim died en route to a hospital after suffering a seizure, officials say. 

Noor Rashid said Sunday that he expected autopsy results to be released within days.

“We have to send a sample to the chemistry department, we have to send a sample for toxicology tests,” he said.

Investigators also want to speak to Kim Jong Nam’s next of kin to identify the body. He is believed to have two sons and a daughter with two women living in Beijing and Macau. 

“We haven’t met the next of kin,” Noor Rashid said. “We are working, we are trying very hard to get the next of kin to come and to assist us in the investigation.”

The case has raised tensions between Malaysia and North Korea. Pyongyang officials have demanded custody of Kim’s body and strongly objected to an autopsy, saying they will reject any results. The Malaysians went ahead with the autopsy anyway, saying they were simply following procedure. 
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The International Monetary Fund said Sunday that it and other partners have agreed on terms for a more than $5 billion loan package to the Mongolian government to help get the north Asian country’s economy back on track. 

The deal is subject to approval by the IMF’s executive board, which is expected to consider Mongolia’s request in March.

According to the terms agreed by the Mongolian government and IMF envoys, the IMF would provide $440 million over three years. The Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Japan and South Korea are together expected to provide up to $3 billion, and the People’s Bank of China is expected to extend its 15 billion RMB ($2 billion) swap line with the Bank of Mongolia for at least another three years, the IMF statement said. 

The economy of mineral-rich Mongolia has been hit hard in recent years by a sharp decline in commodity prices and a collapse in foreign direct investment. 

Adding to Mongolia’s woes is an exceptionally cold winter for the second successive year, which the Red Cross warned last week was putting the livelihoods of more than 150,000 nomadic herders and family members at risk. 

Mongolia’s national debt now stands around $23 billion, or twice the annual economic output, and a $580 million payment to foreign bondholders is due March 21.

The IMF statement said the loan agreement would mean Mongolia has to strengthen its banking system and adopt fiscal reforms to ensure that budget discipline is maintained. 

Generally, terms required by the IMF as a condition for such lending often prompt complaints in borrower countries that the conditions hurt the poor or undercut economic growth by reducing social spending or investment in public facilities. 
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A United States aircraft carrier strike group has begun patrols in the South China Sea, the U.S. navy said on Saturday, amid renewed tension over the disputed waterway.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday warned Washington against challenging its sovereignty, responding to reports the United States was planning fresh naval patrols in the South China Sea.

The navy said the force, including Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, began routine operations in the South China Sea on Saturday. The announcement was posted on the Vinson’s Facebook page.
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Satsuki Ina was born behind barbed wire in a prison camp during World War Two, the daughter of U.S. citizens forced from their home without due process and locked up for years following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Roughly 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans were sent to desolate camps that dotted the West because the government claimed they might plot against the U.S. Thousands were elderly, disabled, children or infants too young to know the meaning of treason. Two-thirds were citizens.

And now, as survivors commemorate the 75th anniversary of the executive order that authorized their incarceration, they’re also speaking out to make sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Muslims, Latinos or other groups.

Executive orders

They’re alarmed by recent executive orders from President Donald Trump that limit travel and single out immigrants.

In January, Trump banned travelers from seven majority Muslim nations from entering the U.S., saying he wanted to thwart potential attackers from slipping into the country. A federal court halted the ban. Trump said at a news conference Thursday that he would issue a replacement order next week.

“We know what it sounds like. We know what the mood of the country can be. We know a president who is going to see people in a way that could victimize us,” said Ina, a 72-year-old psychotherapist who lives in Oakland, California.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, to protect against espionage and sabotage. Notices appeared ordering people of Japanese descent to report to civil stations for transport.

Desperate families sold off belongings for cheap and packed what they could. The luckier ones had white friends who agreed to care for houses, farms and businesses in their absence.

“Others who couldn’t pay their mortgage, couldn’t pay their bills, they lost everything. So they had to pretty much start from scratch,” said Rosalyn Tonai, 56, executive director of the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco.

Tonai was shocked to learn in middle school that the U.S. government had incarcerated her mother, aunts and grandparents. Her family hadn’t talked about it. Her mother, a teenager at the time, said she didn’t remember details.

‘Internment’

Her organization, the Japanese American Citizens League and others oppose the use of the word “internment.” They say the government used euphemisms such as “internment,” “evacuation,” and “non-alien” to hide the fact that U.S. citizens were incarcerated and the Constitution violated.

The groups say this White House has what they see as the same dangerous and flippant attitude toward the Constitution. Japanese-American lawmakers expressed horror when a Donald Trump supporter cited the camps as precedent for a Muslim registry.

The Japanese American Citizens League “vehemently” objected to executive orders signed by Trump last month, to build a wall along the Mexican border, punish “sanctuary” cities that protect people living in the country illegally, and limit refugees and immigrants from entering the country.

“Although the threat of terrorism is real, we must learn from our history and not allow our fears to overwhelm our values,” the statement read in part.

Hiroshi Kashiwagi was 19 when his family was ordered from their home in Northern California’s Placer County and to a temporary detention center.

He remembers slaughtering his prized chickens — New Hampshire Reds — for his mother to cook with soy sauce and sugar. She stored the bottled birds in sturdy sacks to take on the trip. The family ate the chickens at night to supplement meals. The birds didn’t last long.

Today, Kashiwagi, 94, is a poet and writer in San Francisco who speaks to the public about life at Tule Lake, a maximum security camp near the Oregon border. Winters were cold, the summers hot. They were helpless against dust storms that seeped inside.

“I feel obligated to speak out, although it’s not a favorite subject,” he said. “Who knows what can happen? The way this president is, he does not go by the rules. I’m hoping that he would be impeached.”

Orders against Japanese-Americans were revoked after the war ended in 1945. They returned to hostility and discrimination in finding work or places to live.

‘Race prejudice’

A congressional commission formed in 1980 blamed the incarceration on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill to compensate every survivor with a tax-free check for $20,000 and a formal apology from the U.S. government.

Ina said that only then did her mother, Shizuko, feel she got her face back, her dignity returned. By then her father, Itaru, had died.

“This is a burden we’ve been carrying, and if we can make that burden into something meaningful that could help and protect other people, then it becomes not so much an obligation but more as a responsibility,” Ina said.

After Trump’s election, Ina vowed to reach out to the Muslim community and protest and tell everyone about what happened to her family. She brought her message to a gathering of camp survivors in the Los Angeles area.

“And this old woman, she had a cane, she said, ‘OK. I’m going to tell everybody about what happened. This is very bad. It’s happening again,’ ” she said. “It’s that kind of spirit.”
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