Passion and Pain

Week Twelve: Burma/Myanmar Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him (James 1:12).

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is a largely rural, densely forested country situated between India and Thailand. Despite its rich culture of ethnic diversity, Burma is ruled by a racist military junta. This brutal regime perpetuates political and economic domination by violently persecuting minority ethnic groups and has turned the ethnic Karin State into one vast concentration camp.

This regime regularly and systematically commits gross violations of human rights, including the forcible relocation of civilians and the widespread use of forced labour, which includes children. Burma‘s military ruler, General Than Shwe, is a decorated specialist in psychological warfare, and is committed to the imposition of Buddhism upon all citizens of Burma. Reporting on the situation in 1997, the United Nations Special Rapporteur found: "There is essentially no freedom of thought, opinion, expression, or association in Myanmar".

According to Government statistics, nearly 90 percent of Burma‘s 50 million persons practice Buddhism, while only 4 percent are Christians (predominantly Baptists, as well as a wide variety of Protestant groups and significant numbers of Catholics). Christianity is the dominant religion among the Kachin ethnic group in the North, and the Chin and Naga ethnic groups in the West. Christianity is also practiced widely among the Karen and Karenni ethnic groups of the southern and eastern regions. As a result, these ethnic groups have been targeted for overt religious persecution by the Burmese military.

The military has pressured Chin Christians to convert to Buddhism by targeting them specifically for forced labour and other abuses of human rights. Since the early 1990s, security forces have torn down, and forced Chin Christian villagers to tear down crosses they have erected in their villages. The villagers are then forced to build Buddhist pagodas to take the place of the crosses. Military units have repeatedly established their camps on the sites of Christian churches and graveyards, which they desecrated and destroyed in the process.

The Burmese military prevents evangelists from preaching in Chin, and soldiers have beaten Christian clergy who refuse to sign statements promising to stop preaching to nonChristians. All gatherings of five or more people are illegal, and families must register all houseguests with the Government. In April 2002, two Chin pastors and their families were arrested in a suburb of Rangoon for having unregistered overnight guests in their homes. The pastors were later transferred to Insein prison (where Aung San Suu Kyi was also imprisoned by the military in 2003), and the status of their eight family members is unknown.

Many Christian Chin are pressured, and some are forced to attend schools for monks and Buddhist monasteries, and are then encouraged to convert to Buddhism. Local Government officials have separated many children of Chin Christians from their parents under the false pretence of giving them free secular education and allowing them to practice their own religion. In reality, the children were housed in Buddhist monasteries where they were indoctrinated in and converted to Buddhism without their parents‘ knowledge or consent.