Theravada               Buddhist           Monastery

Hundreds of Cambodian referagees now living in Wellington will soon have a place to call their own if a proposal to build the city's first Buddhist monastery meets with local approval.

The Wellington Cambodian Buddhist Trust wants to build a two-storey meeting place in Island Bay for the estimated ... Cambodian families now living in Wellington.

The Trust spokesman Hient Kung said almost all the Cambodians in Wellington were Buddhists, yet they had no official place to go to meet, talk and pray. Many had left Cambodia to escape the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. About 20 families a year continued to flee to New Zealand.

The elderly and the Buddhist monks currently met in a house in Island Bay, where prayer meetings were also held. They studied religion and talked of their homeland before the Khmer Rouge, and of the latest developments in Cambodia.

The refugees who had left their homes could never return, even though many still had families in Cambodia. Even the letters they sent were unlikely to get there, as they were all opened and censored in Vietnam.

A proper meting house and mediation centre was essential for Cambodians to feel at home in New Zealand, Mr Moeung said "We should have a place like this to gather and to teach our children about what happened (in Cambodia), to learn our language, so that they do not forget."

About $200,000 was needed to build the monastery, and so far about $40,000 had been raised through donations, and fund raising activities. Many Cambodian families gave what little money they could spare every month.

The first step is to gain approval from the Wellington City Council. The proposed building needs planning consent, as it is an area zoned residential for residential use. 

So far there have been no objections from local residents.