Their Own Private Apocalypse

With each passing day, the news from Myanmar—that is, Burma—gets worse: As of Sunday, May 11, nearly 300,000 people were reported as dead or missing. The United Nations estimated “that between 1.2 million and 1.9 million were struggling to survive in the aftermath of the storm . . .” As appalling as these numbers are, what is equally, if not more appalling, is the conduct of the Burmese junta: It is actively hindering relief efforts. Late last week, the UN’s World Food Program stopped sending food aid after the junta seized previous shipments. However this particular controversy is eventually resolved, the world has already learned what some Christians already knew: The junta does not value the lives of its people. On May 2, cyclone Nagris made landfall in the Irrawaddy Delta, Burma’s principal rice-growing region. Initially, casualty figures, as with most major disasters, trickled in slowly—so slowly that the world’s initial response was to speculate on global warming’s role in the disaster. Then as the devastation became clear, the emphasis was on alleviating suffering. Yet a week after the cyclone, the junta was still refusing to let relief workers into the country, insisting that countries send only supplies and not personnel. A World Food Program spokesman told the media that “all of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated . . .” This left the UN with “no choice” but to suspend attempts at food aid. The junta eventually relented, but only after stamping their own names on the boxes, and not soon enough to prevent a catastrophe. Their intransigence may have already doomed a generation of Burmese children, according to international aid agencies. They warned of epidemics of “apocalyptic proportions.” The death toll from the epidemics and starvation could exceed the death toll from the storm itself. As one brave Burmese shop-owner put it, “[the junta doesn’t] care about the plight of the people.” No one knows this better than Burma’s Christians. As I have told you repeatedly, the plight of our Burmese brethren has been desperate. You have learned about a pattern of persecution that includes ethnic cleansing of Christian minority groups, the destruction of villages, forced conversions, and even rape and murder. All of this is part of the junta’s attempt “to create a uniform society in which the race and language is Burmese and the only accepted religion is Buddhism.” For the most part, the mainstream media have ignored that story. In fact, most people in the West do not even know that Burma has a substantial Christian population. For them, human rights in Burma is about protesting Buddhist monks, not suffering Christians. Of course, cyclone Nagris did not make such distinctions, and we ought not to, either. We ought to be at the forefront of alleviating the suffering of the Burmese people. But at the same time, we ought to point out to the world that while cyclones do not discriminate between Buddhists and Christians, this junta does. And our nation ought to be mobilizing world opinion to bring down this oppressive regime.  

For Further Reading and Information

The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters by Charles Colson and Harold Fickett.  

For Further Reading and Information

See BreakPoint’s fact sheet on “Helping Persecuted Burmese Christians.” “Bloated Corpses Pile Up; First U.S. Aid Flight Arrives in Myanmar,” CNN, 13 May 2008. Stephen McGinty, “Apocalypse Threatens to Engulf Burma but Junta Seizes Aid,” Scotsman, 10 May 2008. Anne Applebaum, “Go around the Generals,” Washington Post, 13 May 2008, A15. “Concerns over Myanmar Junta’s Role,” New York Times, 14 May 2008. “Aid Shipments to Burma to Resume; More Rain on the Way,” FOX News, 11 May 2008. “Burmese Military Says 80,000 Killed by Cyclone,” Advertiser, 8 May 2008. “UN halts aid to Myanmar after junta seizes supplies,” Associated Press, 9 May 2008. Catherina Hurlburt, “Let My People Eat,” The Point, 14 May 2008. Catherina Hurlburt, “To Put the Horror in Perspective,” The Point, 13 May 2008. Paul Tighe and Demian McLean, “Myanmar Junta Pressed by UN, U.S., India to Take Aid,” Bloomberg.com, 13 May 2008. BreakPoint Commentary No. 040713, “Faithful unto Death: The Plight of Burmese Christians.” BreakPoint Commentary No. 070131, “Wiping Out Christians: Brutality in Burma.” BreakPoint Commentary No. 071108, “Where Were You?: Persecution in Burma.” Kristin Wright, “Lonely, Flickering Light: Adoniram Judson and the Church in Burma,” BreakPoint Online, 24 October 2006.  

05/15/08