Do They Know It's Christmas?
MARSHALL, PAUL
Do They Know It’s Christmas? Not in Burma and Eritrea. BY PAUL MARSHALL For Christians—and many Muslims—the main reason to celebrate this Christmas is, of course, Jesus’ birth. But there...
...In October 2006, two Christians, Immanuel Andegergesh and Kibrom Firemichel, were tortured to death in a military camp...
...But the regime’s destruction of its ethnic and religious minorities seldom receives coverage, though it rivals that in Darfur...
...The government’s ethnic and religious cleansing of these groups verges on the genocidal, including destruction of villages, land confi scation, forced labor, use of human minesweepers, and rape and torture—especially in the Karen, Shan, and Mon states...
...People die or go insane...
...Burma made international news this year when, in August and September, thousands of courageous Buddhist monks led peaceful demonstrations against the military regime, which responded with mass killings, beatings, and arrests of monks...
...But there are also trends in the church worldwide that make this Advent season at once a time of especial hope and a time of great suffering and darkness...
...More than 150,000 people, predominantly Karen and Karennis, are Paul Marshall is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom...
...For those who celebrate Christmas and those who do not, this season is an excellent time to remember these and other forgotten people of the world...
...Some Christian leaders in Gaza have been murdered while others have had to fl ee...
...Since 1996, the army has destroyed over 3,000 villages in eastern Burma...
...The Religious Affairs Ministry is on the grounds of the World Peace Pagoda (Kaba Aye) in Rangoon, the residence for senior Buddhist monks...
...Even in Britain, newspapers are reporting threats to Muslim converts to Christianity: Many remain in hiding, and one has had to move 45 times...
...This repression has specifi c religious elements...
...During the 2006 “Danish cartoon riots,” Muslims rioting in Borno State killed 65 and destroyed 57 churches and 250 businesses...
...Nigerian Christians are also often the victims when others produce allegedly blasphemous drawings...
...And New Year’s is a good time to resolve that they shall be less forgotten...
...Two-thirds of Christians and four-fifths of active Christians live outside the West, so Christianity now may well be the world’s largest nonWestern religion...
...In February of this year, Magos Solomon Semere died under torture at the Adi-Nefase Military Confi nement facility outside Assab...
...Torture is widespread, with reports this fall of prisoners being roasted over fi res...
...The minority ethnic groups have significant Christian, Muslim, and animist communities...
...In one incident in 2003, 57 teenagers found with Bibles at a summer military camp were held jailed in metal containers to force them to abandon their faith, and all but six died...
...Persecution continues in Laos, India, Iraq, Turkey, Ethiopia, Sudan, Belarus, and elsewhere...
...Torture is commonplace, especially tying prisoners in painfully contorted positions for hours or days at a time...
...In Chin State unmarried Buddhist government soldiers have been encouraged, with offers of higher rank and privileges, to marry and convert Christian Chin women...
...Violators may be imprisoned and required to sign statements renouncing their belief as a condition of release...
...On September 5, a 33-year-old woman, Nigisti Haile, was tortured to death at the Wi’a Military Training Center for refusing to recant her Christian faith...
...In a country where almost everyone is persecuted, however, the religious minorities are more so...
...In China, despite ongoing repression (in early December, 270 housechurch pastors were arrested in the city of Linyi alone), Christianity is expanding at a rate that has few parallels in history...
...In one instance parents were asked to sign a document stating that their children would be liable to execution if taking part in forbidden religious activities...
...Christians are forced to engage in destruction of churches, and Muslims of mosques...
...It is also a time when the Chinese and Vietnamese governments are prone to arrest their unregistered believers...
...His World Survey of Religious Freedom will be published by Rowman and Littlefi eld in January...
...A further 200,000 Shan refugees are thought to be in Thailand without recognition or camp facilities...
...At least 1,000,000 people are internally displaced...
...Incarceration is brutal, with underground cells or metal shipping containers serving as especially severe punishment cells...
...The Chin, Kachin, and Karenni are about 90 percent Christian...
...Similar growth has taken place in Africa, which is now majority Christian and is likely soon to have more Christians than any other continent...
...There is forced conversion...
...Unauthorized meetings of more than seven are forbidden: Entire wedding parties have been arrested...
...Other examples could be given, but two of the worst, Burma and Eritrea, receive scant attention because their repressions do not fi t any wider international political agendas, hence their victims are among the world’s most forgotten people...
...In compulsory military service, Bible reading and prayer are banned...
...The number of imprisoned evangelicals is probably over 2,000, some 10 percent of the country’s total...
...On pain of death they are conscripted into forced labor, including building pagodas and monasteries...
...Violence continues in Nigeria, where tens of thousands have died in confl icts around the spread of Islamic law...
...The Bada detention center is more than 200 feet below sea level and can have temperatures over 130 degrees...
...As shown by the Buddhist-led demonstrations this fall, this campaign is not conducted by true Buddhist leaders: They too are monitored and repressed...
...Only four religious groups—Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Orthodox Christianity, and Sunni Islam—are allowed...
...A rival to Burma’s brutality is Eritrea which, since its 1993 independence from Ethiopia, has maintained itself as a militarily mobilized national security state...
...Equally brave democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest, still gains some attention...
...The government’s program of “Burmanization” includes not only privileges for ethnic Burmans but also promotion of Buddhism in the name of “national solidarity...
...In 2005, 161 young people were killed attempting to fl ee the harsh conditions...
...But for probably hundreds of millions, Christmas is shadowed by pain and fear, since this is usually the peak season for anti-Christian attacks in Pakistan, India, Sudan, Nigeria, and beyond...
...in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border...
...Adherents of other faiths are viciously attacked, especially Pentecostals and other evangelicals...
...Mosque and church construction is forbidden...
...Estimates placing the total number at over 80 million are no longer considered outlandish...
...In purely numerical terms, Christianity is the world’s fastest growing religion...
...The Naga have signifi cant numbers of Christians, and the Karen are about 40 percent Christian...
Vol. 13 • December 2008 • No. 16
