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On the Burmese side of the Moei River, the reality of the Burma Army attack was there for all to see. Where just a few weeks before had stood a thriving community with a church, school, houses, and clinic, there was now little more than ashes.

The pastor came and sat next to me as we looked at the burned-out ruins of his church: a few charred bamboo pillars and some pews. A beam that once held up the roof now formed a cross, symbol of the people's suffering.

In an operation that plays out regularly in eastern Burma, the troops had set fire to the homes, looted and destroyed the clinic, burned the crops, and set the church ablaze. This particular village had good intelligence systems; the people knew the military was on its way. Villagers crossed the river into Thailand and remained there until it was safe. Not for the first time, they watched their village burn. Had the people not escaped, they would have been killed, raped, or taken for forced labor. They moved a few miles upriver and built a new community, in the knowledge that it too would someday be destroyed.

"We have to leave village after village, house after house," the pastor told me. "But it increases our faith. We are Christians; we know God will help us. But please remember us in your prayers. Please do not forget."

North Americans rarely read about Burma (also called Myanmar) in their newspapers, though the courage of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi garnered a few stories last year. Neither the plight of the 5 million Karen and the few hundred thousand Karenni nor the persecution of Burmese Christians is likely to see much news coverage. That news gap is troublesome because the situation in Burma is one of the most brutal in the world.

The nearly 4 million Christians in Burma are among the 250 million members of the worldwide persecuted church. The U.S. State Department has ranked Burma as one of the six worst violators of religious freedom.

But the persecution is tied up with politics. The Karen, Karenni, Chin, and Kachin ethnic minority groups, struggling for freedom from a brutal Burmese regime, include substantial Christian populations.

In an effort to terrorize the ethnic groups into submission, the Burma Army uses religion as a weapon of war. When it is convenient to do so, the army cloaks itself in Buddhism and stirs up anti-Christian sentiment. Churches are often the first targets in attacks on ethnic villages, while more often than not Buddhist temples are left untouched. In Chin state, which is 90 percent Christian, soldiers tear down crosses and force villagers to build Buddhist pagodas. Burma does not affirm Buddhism as the official state religion, though Buddhists total nearly 83 percent of the population.

But it is not only Christians who suffer. The Burmese regime, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), oppresses all who oppose it. The regime, which seized power in a coup in 1962, held elections in 1990. It lost those elections overwhelmingly but has tightened its grip on power.

Suu Kyi won the elections but remains under house arrest, and many of the elected politicians are still in prison. Over a million people from the Karen, Karenni, and Shan ethnic minorities are displaced in the jungles of eastern Burma, many without shelter, food, or medicine. At least 150,000 refugees have fled to camps in Thailand, while thousands of Chin, Arakan, and Rohingya are displaced along the India and Bangladesh borders. There are at least 1,200 political prisoners.

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March 2004, Vol. 48, No. 3