By LAWI WENG:
Sangkhlaburi – The Mon community in Sangkhlaburi, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand, celebrated to remember the 254th anniversary of the fall of the Hongsawatoi Kingdom.
About one hundred Mons, many of them young people, wore their national dress, held religious observances, performed traditional dances, and donated offerings to monks.
Some people wore black dress to express their sadness for the fall of their kingdom.
“We hold this anniversary ceremony because we want to give merit to the victims who lost their lives during the fall of our kingdom, Hongsawatoi,” said a Mon Buddhist monk, Abbot Hongsar Rajai.
The Burmese King U Aung Zeya invaded and destroyed the Mon Kingdom of Hongsawatoi in 1757, killing thousands of innocent Mons, including Buddhist monks.
“Due to the occupation and repression, our people have not only lost our self-determination rights, but have also become a minority in our own land,” the Mon Affairs Union (MAU), based in Thailand, said in a statement.
The statement said that although Burma has recently formed a new government, it is merely another military government in a different uniform. The regime has not only continued to restrict non-Burman ethnic rights, but also democratic rights.
The anniversary of the fallen Mon kingdom was also celebrated quietly inside Mon State, with ceremonies held in several different villages despite a ban from the new Burmese government.
Mon leaders took the opportunity to tell the history to Mon youth during the anniversary ceremony in order to encourage the youth to love their Mon culture. Leaders also explained how the Burmese king brutally killed the Mon.
Nai Layeh Rot, the organizer of the ceremony and the general secretary of MAU, said, “Many of our youth do not know about this. This is why we need to tell them, in order to let them know about their history.
“If we do not tell this history to our youth, we are worried that a lot of Mon people and history will disappear from this planet,” he said.
The Mon leaders explained that they commemorate the fall of the Hongsawatoi Kingdom every year as part of their campaign to encourage people to know more about Mon history, and to remind them that they had their own kingdom in the past, even though they do not have freedom now.
The anniversary day of the fallen Mon kingdom is celebrated worldwide in such countries as America, Canada, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, and Denmark, where there are Mon people who have resettled.
