Myanmar: Plight of Christian minorities continue

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Myanmar | 25 May 2017

According to UCA News reporting on 28 April 2017, most of the gifts of food and‚ textbooks brought by Aung San Suu Kyi, when she visited a Baptist church-run IDP camp in Myitkyina, Kachin State"s capital, on 28 March, were later confiscated by state officials and ordered to be transported to other IDP camps. ‚ Other notable recent events were the visit of firebrand Buddhist monk U Wirathu to Rakhine State - where the Muslim minority lives (as reported by the Irrawaddy on 5 May 2017), and the establishment of the country"s full diplomatic relations with the Roman Catholic Church (as Reuters reported on 4 May 2017). Thomas Muller, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, explains: "This first report highlights the plight of the estimated 100,000 or more internally displaced people from the Christian minority which is currently overlooked by the international community. They are overlooked partly because the region is extremely difficult to access and partly because their situation is eclipsed by the highly publicized plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State. Although unintentionally, the other high-profile news items mentioned above also serve to distract attention away from the situation of the Christians in Kachin and Shan State."