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Kiet Chan Thouch, the ‘biting monk’ from Wat Leu in Preah Sihanouk province. (Photo by: Deum Ampil)By May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post
IN his first interview with the media since being accused of attacking and biting his fellow monks and nuns, the chief monk of Preah Sihanouk province’s Wat Leu and adviser to Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong told the Post on Tuesday that the allegations against him were totally baseless.
“I am a monk. I have been ordained for 20 years already. How could I drink wine? If I drank wine, I would have defrocked myself, but I haven’t done this,” Kiet Chan Thouch said, accusing his colleagues of acting on personal agendas. “There are some monks and nuns who are accusing me of things for their own profit, getting local newspapers to write bad things about me. All I asked them to do was to clean the pagoda on Phchum Ben day. I’m the leader. It’s up to me to order them to work, but they said I mistreated them. I am a monk, so how can I have a gun?
“If I was supposedly fighting with them, why didn’t they stay at the pagoda and talk with me instead of running to talk with the newspapers? This is a part of Buddhist Lenten practice, that a monk cannot stay away from the pagoda. I’m a monk, but I still know about penal law. If I fight with people, the police will come to arrest me. They wouldn’t allow me to stay in the pagoda, as they are today.”
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