Posted on 01/20/2007 7:13:51 PM PST by Flavius
The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been leaked from a government ministry. Entitled "Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma", the incendiary memo contains point by point instructions on how to drive Christians out of the state.
The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised", calls for anyone caught evangelising to be imprisoned. It advises: "The Christian religion is very gentle – identify and utilise its weakness."
Its discovery follows widespread reports of religious persecution, with churches burnt to the ground, Christians forced to convert to the state religion, Buddhism, and their children barred from school.
Human rights groups claim that the treatment meted out to Christians, who make up six per cent of the population, is part of a wider campaign by the regime, also targeted at ethnic minority tribes, to create a uniform society in which the race and language is Burmese and the only accepted religion is Buddhism.
In the past year, an estimated 27,000 members of the predominantly Christian Karen tribe were driven from their homes in eastern Burma.
In Koh Kyi village, in Arakan State, a monk backed by the military burnt down the local church. In another state, 300 monks were allegedly sent by the regime to forcibly convert the populace, all of whom belonged to the Chin ethnic group, which is mostly Christian.
The document, shown to The Sunday Telegraph by human rights groups, may have been produced by a state-sponsored Buddhist group, but with the tacit approval of the military junta. The regime has denied authorship of the document – which also calls for teenagers to be prevented from wearing Western clothes – but has made no public attempt to refute or repudiate its contents.
The dictatorship has long been accused of large-scale human rights abuses. In power since 1988, the generals annulled the National League for Democracy's sweeping 1990 election victory and jailed its leader, the Nobel peace prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi. She remains under house arrest. Last week she was accused of tax evasion for failing to hand over any of her Nobel prize winnings to the authorities.
Eha Hsar Paw, a Karen Christian, who fled her village while heavily pregnant to a refugee camp near the border with Thailand, said: "The journey here was very difficult. It was hard to leave our village, but if we had stayed there we would all be dead."
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I don't remember any "anti-war Buddhists from the 60s." Who were they and where were they?
Isn't Burma now known as Myanmar?
Then you throw in the spin coming from political factions and the traitorous western media and the fog of war quickly becomes a stinking swamp. That much is analogous to Iraq. In a just world a lot of talking heads ought to be marched out in the street and shot.
I did a Google search on Avro Manhatten and didn't find anything particulary negative about him other than the subject matter itself that he chose to write about. There is no doubt that he was controversial just for that. As to his veracity? I have no way to assess that at this time.
I started a new folder called "Vietnam" putting the article you found and the one I had in it for starters. The subject continues to be both controversial and relevant. Our failure in SE Asia continues to haunt us and should be a lesson learned as it applies to the current WoT. IMO the ramifications of failing in the WoT will be greater. China is waiting like a lion in the tall grass just waiting to see what damage the hyenas do to the west.
What kind of Buddhism?
Wrong. If you had bothered to read the posts on this thread it should have been obvious that those Vietnamese Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest to Diem's government policies in S. Vietnam. They weren't protesting the Vietnam war or war in general.
If you were speaking of self-defense why didn't you come out and say so instead of wrapping it in all that pseudo-religious double-speak?
A friend of mine is a Chin, a non-burmese native of Burma. Perhaps 500 people speak his native language. "Walk five miles down the road, and nobody understands you anymore," is the way he described his linguistic community. He's an engineer three generations out of the stone age, and a model Christian husband, father, and American citizen.
Not wrong.
If you'd read something beyond this thread, you'd know that some "monks" in America set themselves on fire as well. Whether or not they were legitimate monks remains to be seen, which is why I put the term in quotes. The point is that they were not driven by their religion but by political impulses.
I wasn't talking only about self defense. I was talking about national defense as well. The point I was making was that there are two kinds of violence. Leftists who call themselves Christians have been pushing for years (all the way back to the Quakers who protested the Am. Revolution) that if you are a Christian, you can never use violence. I don't see this backed up by scripture. It also isn't backed up by common sense.
The government in Burma isn't Buddhist it's a socialist military junta. It certainly isn't following Buddhist precepts in any way.
This should be all over the news. If it had been "European country orders non-Christians to be wiped out", it would have been all over the news.
Well, Peterman WAS the only white poet warlord in the area.
OK. This thread was the context within which I was responding. It has already cut a wide swath beyond the topic of the originating article. But had I wanted to home in on the narrow issue of "anti-war" Buddhists what would I have Googled to find that? I have already Googled such things as "immolation, Buddhist monks" and didn't see anything about Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire in the U.S. I never heard of it at the time either.
It doesn't seem like enough of a phenomena to rate inclusion in your rant about "self-defense" it just sounds like you took an opportunity to slam Buddhists with a broad-brush based on some tiny handful of Vietnamese Buddhists in one tiny moment of history.
I wasn't talking only about self defense. I was talking about national defense as well.
I don't even see a distinction there. Self-defense is self-defense regardless of whether you're talking about an individual or a nation. I could care less what scripture says about it one way or the other.
I slammed Buddhists? No, I didn't.
One poster said that he thought Buddhists were always peaceful.
I explained that when you study the history of all the major religions, there was plenty of violence, both within the religion among the various branches, and without.
I then went on to say that some people claim that Christians must never use violence. I debunked that precept.
It was that simple. I never slammed anyone, rather defended those that defend themselves, whether they consider themselves religious or not.
And if "monks" never set themselves on fire in this country to protest the Vietnam war, I wouldn't be surprised. I was a young skull full of mush and it was a very liberal history teacher who explained to us what had been happening.
It is certainly true that violence has crossed all lines of religion, culture and society but I don't know of any war ever fought in the name of Buddhism.
Given that you described the military dictatorship of Burma in your post, it contradicted your claim that a Google search can eliminate a lot of ignorance about Bhutan, which is a constitutional monarchy.
This seems less about Buddhist's and something more insideous under the surface of the "state sponsored religion."
Up until about 300 years ago, Christianity pretty much acted the same way toward non-Christians. Burma may be a bit behind the times, but it isn't doing anything that hasn't been done in the West.
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