People in Myanmar need more than an annual prayer

They need us to be with them, in spirit, solidarity, prayer and practical action, every day

Mar 14, 2024

By Benedict Rogers
Last Sunday was, as the second Sunday in March always is, the Global Day of Prayer for Burma/Myanmar. For me, every day throughout the year is a day of prayer for Myanmar. The troubled nation needs our prayers, like never before.

Almost two weeks ago, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, calling the crisis in Myanmar a “never-ending nightmare.”

He is spot-on. And that is why the world must wake up to the tragedy in Myanmar. That is why people of faith must pray not just once a year but every day. And that is why political leaders must act urgently.

The UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said that the threat to Myanmar’s populace by the junta is greater than ever.

The Global Day of Prayer for Burma — or “Myanmar” as the regime prefers — has been going on for almost 30 years.

It started after David Eubank, a former United States Special Forces soldier turned missionary who founded the Free Burma Rangers, met Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon in 1996.

In that meeting, Daw Suu — as she is affectionately known — told him that although she is a Buddhist, she reads the Bible every day and her favorite verse is John 8:32: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Three years of illegal military rule since the coup on Feb. 1, 2021, which overthrew the democratically elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, has brought “unbearable levels of suffering and cruelty on people in Myanmar.”

Daw Suu told Eubank she knew that Christians pray, and so asked him to mobilize Christians around the world to pray for Myanmar.

For the past three decades that is what many of us have been doing.

When Daw Suu first made that request, she was in between house arrests. From her first arrest in 1989 until her release in 2010, she spent 15 years — cumulatively, across three periods — in detention.

Then, from 2012 it appeared as if a new era had dawned. Not only was she free, but she was elected in a by-election to parliament. Three years later she won a landslide victory in the country’s first reasonably free and fair elections.

She formed a government, sharing power with the military as stipulated under the constitution, and became Myanmar’s de facto civilian head of government.

In 2020, she won re-election and was on the cusp of a second term in government when she was overthrown in yet another military coup and has been jailed ever since.

Myanmar has been plunged back into the abyss — with the clock of repression turned back by more than a decade.

Daw Suu remains in jail, in declining health, with no contact with her family except for very occasional correspondence. A month ago her son, Kim Aris revealed he had received the first letter from his mother in more than three years.

Indeed, today in Myanmar, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, over 20,000 political prisoners remain in jail. They are subjected to what Türk describes as “systematic use of torture.”

At least 4,600 individuals have been killed by the military since the coup, including hundreds of women and children, according to him.

The actual death toll is likely to be much higher. Witnesses suggest that hundreds of civilians have been burnt alive or executed by the military.

Turk described this “chilling disregard for human life” as having been accompanied by other “sweeping violations of fundamental rights and the rule of law.”

Even worse is the brutality — the war crimes and crimes against humanity — inflicted upon Myanmar’s ethnic regions, especially the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Shan, Mon and Rakhine.

Many of these are areas I have visited and made friends with people. Some of them have not just been jailed — they have been beheaded.

The military’s campaigns of bombardment, ground assault, rape, torture and enslavement in the ethnic areas constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The evidence is there for all to see.

As the UN High Commissioner noted, “heavy weapons are today causing a majority of civilian deaths as the military has increasingly directed its war crimes at towns and cities… Over half of those victims were women and children. This is horrific.”

More than 2.6 million people have been displaced in Myanmar, and needed “life-saving assistance.” These are the UN’s figures. The real figures are likely much higher — and even more alarming.

More than a million people continue to languish in refugee camps in Bangladesh alone, as survivors of the genocide of the Rohingyas.

And if you want an insight into Myanmar’s prison conditions, read the memoir of Australian economist and academic Sean Turnell.

Turnell spent years working with Daw Suu. And he spent 18 months in Myanmar’s worst jails.

His book reveals extraordinary courage, amazing wisdom, incredible insights, profound humor, deep humanity and humility. Indeed, there are many books on Myanmar, but if I could only recommend one, I would say read the one by Turnell.

Read it and be uplifted, inspired and encouraged both by the insights into prison life and the determination to continue the fight.

“For the last three years, people in Myanmar have sacrificed everything and kept alive their aspirations for a better and safer future,” Türk told the UN.

“They need the entire international community to support them,” he added.

They do. They deserve our support. And they need more than our prayers once a year, cherished though those are.

They need us to be with them, in spirit, solidarity, prayer and practical action, every day.

For me, that means doing everything possible to provide a lifeline to the people of Myanmar and cutting the lifeline that keeps the illegal junta alive.

How about you?--ucanews.com