PATHEIN (UCAN): At least four Catholic churches in villages in the Diocese of Pathein in the Irrawaddy Region of Myanmar, were searched by police and soldiers looking for alleged illegal activities or anti-coup activists on the evening of April 8.
Security personnel holding guns searched inside one Catholic church and checked around the cemetery, according to Church sources, security personnel also searched the Catholic church in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, on April 3.
The latest targeting of Catholic churches follows military raids on other churches in Kachin state, a Christian stronghold, over the Easter weekend.
Soldiers conducted searches of Catholic, Kachin Baptist and Anglican churches in Mohnyin township, Kachin state, on April 3.
On March 1, security forces also broke the gate of a Kachin Baptist church in Lashio, Shan state, and detained more than 10 religious leaders and staff who were later released, according to media reports.
Reports said security forces fired shots inside the church compound while looking for anti-coup protesters who had reportedly run inside.
“These raids are deplorable and are blatant violations of religious freedom. Religious places are sacred. The entire population stigmatises and is scandalised by the fact that one enters with weapons in hand in a sacred place,” one source told Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, it added, “Buddhist churches and monasteries are regularly ransacked with violence. These are serious acts of intimidation by the army that are generating growing tension and hostility in the Burmese population of all ethnicities and religions.”
These raids are deplorable and are blatant violations of religious freedom. Religious places are sacred. The entire population stigmatises and is scandalised by the fact that one enters with weapons in hand in a sacred place
Some Catholics spoke out on social media and condemned their actions as unacceptable as they entered a sacred place with guns.
Catholic and Protestant leaders have yet to speak out publicly about the military raids.
Christians have conducted prayers, held fasts for a peaceful solution and played a significant role in nationwide anti-coup protests as well as supplying food and non-food items to people most impacted by the February 1 military coup (Sunday Examiner, February 7).
Areas occupied by the Kachin, Chin, Karen and Kayah—who have been facing oppression and persecution at the hands of the military for decades—are largely Christian.
More than 100,000 people remain in camps for displaced persons in Kachin and Shan states, while another 100,000, mostly Karen Christians, are in camps across the Thai border.
The long-standing conflicts, while not religious in nature, have deeply impacted Christian communities, with the military reportedly damaging or destroying over 300 churches, according to a the 2020 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The military’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters shows no signs of abating as the death toll has risen to more than 700, including at least 82 people killed in Bago town on April 9.
Charles Cardinal Bo of Yangon has called for forgiveness and reconciliation in a wounded nation, which has been bedevilled with civil wars for more than 70 years.
“Let us not repay inhumanity with inhumanity, brutality with brutality. Civil war would wound every one and would take decades to heal. Let us not take that path of self-destruction,” the cardinal said in a Twitter post on April 7.
