Home News Christian students condemn move by ecumenical group to meet with military

Christian students condemn move by ecumenical group to meet with military

Junta troops have razed at least 4,571 civilian houses since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup just over a year ago

A group of Christian students in Myanmar condemned an earlier call made by the Myanmar Council of Churches (MCC), an ecumenical body of 11 Protestant denominations, for a meeting between armed ethnic groups and the military junta.

(The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar was not included in the invitation for the meeting, said Bishop Noel Saw Naw Aye, auxiliary bishop of Yangon, in a report on Agenzia Fides.)

The Myanmar Student Christian Movement denounced the MCC call, saying it is supportive of the military. The students called on MCC members to leave the organization.



The students’ group said the MCC is “on the side of evil, against faith in God who is good and merciful.”

The ecumenical group later issued a letter of apology, expressing its “sadness to see and hear its embarrassed and outraged members.” It also did not attend the meeting with the military on Feb. 12.

Meanwhile, junta troops have razed at least 4,571 civilian houses since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup just over a year ago.

A report on Radio Free Asia said more than half of the houses destroyed were in the country’s Sagaing region.

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Research group Data for Myanmar said in a report that the military set 2,567 homes alight in Sagaing, 976 in Chin state, 626 in Magway region, 310 in Kayah state, and dozens of others in Mandalay region, Southern Shan state, Tanintharyi region, Bago region and Kayin state.

The homes were targeted in townships where anti-junta resistance in the form of prodemocracy People’s Defense Force militias and armed ethnic groups has been particularly fierce in recent months, and where the military response has been severe.

On Tuesday, watchdog group Fortify Rights urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to back a UN Security Council-mandated arms embargo prohibiting the sale of weapons to the junta, citing reports of military abuses in Kayah state and elsewhere that it warned could amount to war crimes.

In interviews with RFA’s Myanmar Service, sources in the country’s remote border regions have routinely described troops using civilians as human shields and committing other abuses, including arson, arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual abuse and even murder.

Data for Myanmar said that incidents of village arson began at the end of May 2021 and peaked in October, November and December in 2021, as well as February this year. – with a report from Radio Free Asia

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