Burma 'orders Christians to be wiped out'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Burma 'orders Christians to be wiped out'*
By Peter Pattisson in Kayin State, southern Burma, Sunday Telegraph
The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the
country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been
leaked from a government ministry. Entitled "Programme to destroy the
Christian religion in Burma", the incendiary memo contains point by
point instructions on how to drive Christians out of the state.
The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the
Christian religion is practised", calls for anyone caught evangelising
to be imprisoned. It advises: "The Christian religion is very gentle –
identify and utilise its weakness."
Its discovery follows widespread reports of religious persecution, with
churches burnt to the ground, Christians forced to convert to the state
religion, Buddhism, and their children barred from school.
Human rights groups claim that the treatment meted out to Christians,
who make up six per cent of the population, is part of a wider campaign
by the regime, also targeted at ethnic minority tribes, to create a
uniform society in which the race and language is Burmese and the only
accepted religion is Buddhism.
In the past year, an estimated 27,000 members of the predominantly
Christian Karen tribe were driven from their homes in eastern Burma.
In Koh Kyi village, in Arakan State, a monk backed by the military burnt
down the local church. In another state, 300 monks were allegedly sent
by the regime to forcibly convert the populace, all of whom belonged to
the Chin ethnic group, which is mostly Christian.
The document, shown to The Sunday Telegraph by human rights groups, may
have been produced by a state-sponsored Buddhist group, but with the
tacit approval of the military junta. The regime has denied authorship
of the document – which also calls for teenagers to be prevented from
wearing Western clothes – but has made no public attempt to refute or
repudiate its contents.
The dictatorship has long been accused of large-scale human rights
abuses. In power since 1988, the generals annulled the National League
for Democracy's sweeping 1990 election victory and jailed its leader,
the Nobel peace prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi. She remains under house
arrest. Last week she was accused of tax evasion for failing to hand
over any of her Nobel prize winnings to the authorities.
Eha Hsar Paw, a Karen Christian, who fled her village while heavily
pregnant to a refugee camp near the border with Thailand, said: "The
journey here was very difficult. It was hard to leave our village, but
if we had stayed there we would all be dead."