Protestants rise up against Burmese dictators

FRANCE 24 English, Sep 29, 2023; Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Theravada Buddhists and visitors enjoy the great Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma.

Burma: Inside the Protestant Chin ethnic group's armed resistance against ruling junta

Hateful nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu (AP)

(FRANCE 24 English) France 24 is a French public broadcast service. Since the February 2021 coup in Burma (renamed "Myanmar" by the new military dictators), the Protestant Christian Chin ethnic minority -- one of 135 officially recognized in Burma -- has taken up arms to defend its land, identity and ideals against the all-powerful ruling junta in the Theravada Buddhist-majority country. The team reports. Read more about this story in this article: f24.my/9p4i.y

Myanmar: How the Chin are fighting the Junta

(DW Documentary) DW is a German public broadcast service. Aug. 8, 2023:  After another military coup in Burma (Myanmar) in 2021, the Christian Chin ethnic minority took up arms. The Chin people are fighting to defend their territory, their identity, and their democratic principles against the junta (military dictatorship). In the mountains in the remote west of Burma, a bitter war is raging. The Chin, a primarily Christian minority, still control most of the area after putting up a fierce resistance against the Myanmar military. The resistance fighters train in the mountains along the peaceful Indian border. Hundreds of young people gave up their jobs or studies to join the battle. Although they’re equipped with little more than light weapons, they’re determined to stand their ground. But the civilian population is paying a high price for the war. Thousands of villagers have been bombed by the junta, their homes destroyed. Many have been forced to flee. Nevertheless, the Chin remain committed to the fight to overthrow the military regime. #Myanmar

COMMENTARY

As monks we oppose this bad gov't.

It is not quite correct to call the generals that form the military junta after the coup "Buddhists," they do tend to be Buddhists in name only, as they kill and oppress Buddhist monks and nuns (sayalays), as during the Saffron Revolution when Buddhist monastics stood up against the military dictatorship and were brutally suppressed.

Gen. Than Shwe: Come back, Hillary

That suppression came with the aid and blessing of U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who was in the country making deals with Aung San Suu Kyi to fight a proxy war against China and exploit Burma's resources for the U.S. and Western markets.

As Clinton lost in a humiliating defeat to dumb Donald Trump, the whole plan of setting up a fake nominal democracy in the style of America's farcical one-party system (the Money Party with two wings, moderate and extreme-right) fell through.

Aung San Suu Kyi (Time cover)

After the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority and their return, the Myanmar military committed more atrocities against perceived enemies of the junta (military dictatorship).

The Rohingya, Karens, and Chin are just three of the ethnic minorities so suffer at the hands of oppressive military rule in this police state (which has suffered troubles since the British invasion and arising of George Orwell, who was born here and served in the Royal Forces as a soldier who did not want to side with Great Britain. Much of what he wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four was witnessed and learned in Burma under British rule and applied to England and the West.

Miraculously, Theravada Buddhism survives and is practiced, benefiting from its isolation from Western tourists and outsiders.

While the Burmese people are open to visitors, particularly Westerners, the country's rulers are not interested in anything but the foreign currency tourists bring. So visiting at this time may not be the best idea out of humanitarian concerns.

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk

However, a closed Buddhist country, as for example Bhutan once remained closed, preserves culture. Burma has already been exposed to Western influences: British imperial oppression, the first Western Buddhist monk to be fully ordained being an Irishman more than a century ago who also opposed the British and Christian proselytizers and got in a lot of trouble as a rebel and excellent public speaker. (See the Western Dharma bum Ven. U Dhammaloka).

Then Burma was wooed by its Chinese neighbors, who advanced the corruption of new military leaders out to enrich themselves and their families. Then Burma was made promises by Secretary of State Clinton, promises that fell through, leaving Aung San Suu Kyi in the lurch and disgraced -- and the ASEAN country in turmoil.

Suu Kyi, after years of house arrest, entered government but was such a nationalist and patriot, she could not see the crimes of the real rulers behind the scenes (the junta left in place by Clinton as the country move toward the appearance of parliamentary democracy), the junta attempting to expel or annihilate the Rohingya.

So the world turned against this once great female peace activist who was the greatest hope of the majority of Burmese, as Suu Kyi's father was once a great national hero. She was destined for greatness, restoring the Buddhist country to greatness, but it was not to be. See Burma VJ for a look into the Saffron Revolution and the silly American movie Beyond Rangoon for a hint of what happened that led down this road.

• The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire (Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, Brian Bocking)

Burmese refugees' grim future in Bangladesh

TO OUR MUSLIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN BURMA

As Muslims, they were unwanted in Buddhist Burma. As foreigners, they are unwanted in Muslim Bangladesh. Regardless of their ethnicity or religion, they deserve our compassion.

KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (The Irrawaddy) — Dildar Begum has no country, no job, no food, and she is fast running out of hope. Her husband is imprisoned in a Bangladeshi jail while she lives in a slum with her five children. She is reduced to begging for rice from her impoverished neighbors. Her family is starving, she said.

• How to apply pressure on Burma?

"I can't live this way. It's better if my kids and I die suddenly," the 25-year-old woman said. Begum is one of the hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya ethnic group who have fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in neighboring Burma — only to find themselves languishing in filthy slums or open-air camps where food and water are scarce and medical care, nonexistent. More>>

• Dalai Lama risks Chinese ire to back Muslim Uighurs
• Bangladeshi military atrocities condemned in Calcutta
  (UNPO, Mar. 10, 2010) The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Support Group-Kolkata organized a protest/press conference on the recent atrocities in the CHT (Feb. 19-24, 2010) at the Kolkata Press Club, West Bengal, India on Mar. 3, 2010.
• Burma's forgotten Rohingya
  (BBC News) They have been called one of the world's most persecuted people. Some argue that they are also one of the most forgotten. Thousands of Rohingya fled Burma for Bangladesh in 1992. The Rohingya people of western Burma's Arakan State are forbidden from marrying or travelling without permission and have no legal right to own land or property.

Burma's diversity: Buddhists to Baptists

Shwedagon Pagoda, public access to the sacred shrine in the heart of Rangoon was the spark that ignited the military crackdown (Time.com).

(TIME photoessays) Living under the thumb of a brutal junta, the average Burmese hardly leads an easy life. But the plight of the country's ethnic minorities, many of whom once waged long and bloody insurgencies against the military regime, is even worse. As a new human-rights report released on Jan. 28, as well as the recent stories of destitute refugees who fled Burma attest to, members of Burma's ethnic groups face persistent discrimination by the military regime.

• PHOTOS
• Burma: 19 years of Protest
• Burma: Aftermath
• Burma: Discontent

They are the targets of unpaid forced labor campaigns, scorched-earth policies that destroy farmland, and relocation programs that require entire villages to move at a moment's notice.

Rohingya
Perhaps the most exploited minority in Burma, the Rohingya are a Muslim group. (Visiting the Rohingya, Burma’s hidden population)
1. Shan
   Clustered in the northeastern hills of Burma, the Buddhist Shan were accorded a measure of self-rule by British colonialists, thought in total to number at least 5 million.
2. Chin
   Overwhelmingly Christian (Baptist converts), the Chin live in the impoverished mountains near the India-Burma border and have an armed wing, the Chin National Front. (Pictures: Junta blocking Burma from receiving aid after a cyclone)
3. Karen
   The second-largest ethnic group after the Burmans, comprised of both Christians and Buddhists, the Karen have also waged a long rebellion against the Burmese junta.
4. Kachin
   Mostly Christian, the Kachin live in northern Burma and were famous during colonial times for their battle skills.

Called "Myanmar" [which is simply a more correct pronunciation of Bamar] by its military leaders, Burma derives its name from the Buddhist Burman (or Bamar) people. The country's largest ethnic group, the Burman historically lived in Burma's central and upper plains. But this patchwork country of 55 million is made up of more than 100 unique ethnicities.

• Tension in Burma
• UN Envoy trying to save Burma
• An eye in the sky on Burma

The isolation enforced by Burma's numerous mountains and hills helped nurture these culturally discrete groups, making it one of the most diverse countries in Southeast Asia, despite its relatively small geographic size. Here are five ethnicities, some of who have unsuccessfully waged long insurgencies against the central government and others who have made news recently because of the abuses they have suffered at the hands of the Burman-dominated regime. See full story.

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Report: Myanmar's Chin people persecuted

Denis D. Gray (AP)

An ethnic Chin child refugee sits with his mother in a refugee camp in Kuala Lumpur. Myanmar's military regime is perpetrating widespread abuse of the mainly-Christian Chin ethnic group, who face famine, forced labour, torture and persecution, a rights group has said (AFP/File/Tengku Bahar).

BANGKOK, Thailand – The Chin people, Christians living in the remote mountains of northwestern Myanmar, are subject to forced labor, torture, extrajudicial killings and religious persecution by the country's military regime, a human rights group said Wednesday.

The New York-based Human Right Watch said as many as 100,000 people have fled the Chin homeland into neighboring India, where they face abuse and the risk of being forced back into Myanmar.

"The Chin are unsafe in Burma and unprotected in India," a report from the group said. The report said the regime in Myanmar, also known as Burma, continues to commit atrocities against its other ethnic minorities.

Myanmar's ruling junta has been widely accused of widespread human rights violations in ethnic minority areas where anti-government insurgent groups are fighting for autonomy. The government has repeatedly denied such charges. An e-mailed request for comment on the new report was not immediately answered.

Chief Secretary Vanhela Pachau, a top official for India's Mizoram state, said he had not seen the report and could not comment.

"(The police) hit me in my mouth and broke my front teeth. They split my head open and I was bleeding badly. They also shocked me with electricity," the group quoted a Chin man accused of supporting the insurgents, who are small in number and largely ineffective. More>>