Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 10 Sep 1992 14:23:33 PDT
From:         Coban Tun <tun@QUARK.SFSU.EDU>
Subject:      Burma: Catholic Persecuted in Burma

To:      Faith Doherty
From:    The Greenbase
Date:    TUE  8-SEP-92 20:06:42 GMT
Subject: Catholics persecuted Burma
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CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE [CN01] via NewsNet
Thursday September 3, 1992

BURMA (from RANGOON, Burma)
BURMA SAID PERSECUTING ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS MINORITIES

By Catholic News Service
   RANGOON, Burma (CNS) -- Catholics working secretly inside
Burma say the ruling military junta is persecuting Christians as
part of a policy of systematic repression of ethnic and religious
minorities.
   The Christians, especially Catholics, were being relocated to
arid, barren wastelands and left for dead, the sources told
Reuters, the British news agency.
   In Kayah state, bordering Thailand, 70,000 Catholics who are
members of the Karen hill tribe were moved earlier this year from
ancestral villages to a field without food or water, the sources
said.
   According to one source close to foreign and Burmese Catholics
inside Burma, the Karen were given less than 24 hours to move to
the new site and build new homes.
   A videotape made by a Burmese prelate who visited the area and
which Reuters said it has viewed, showed rows of woven bamboo
huts standing on stilts in a dry, grassless field.
   The prelate made the video so it could be smuggled out of
Burma and used in fund-raising efforts.
   A foreign diplomat in Rangoon said the Karen Catholics were
routinely abused by Burma's military, which accuses them of
collaborating with the Karen National Union rebels who have been
fighting for autonomy for decades.
   ``The military government uses the rebellion as an excuse to
abuse the Karen,'' he said. ``What the government really wants to
do is wipe them out. So it dumps them in the middle of nowhere,
hopes no one will notice and that they'll all die.''
   There are about 1 million Christians in Burma. More than 60
percent of Burma's population of about 41 million are Buddhist,
religious sources said.
   Burmese Christians are predominantly Catholic, Baptist and
Methodist. All are subject to persecution by the ruling junta,
the sources said.
   The junta, which calls itself the State Law and Order
Restoration Council, seized power in 1988 after a mass uprising
was put down when the army fired on demonstrators in Rangoon.
   The military government has since earned a reputation as one
of the world's most brutal regimes. It ignored the result of
elections won by the opposition in May 1990 and began repressing
dissidents.
   Human rights groups such as Asia Watch and Amnesty
International have catalogued hundreds of cases of abuse of
ethnic and religious minorities, including torture and murder.
   The diplomat said international Catholic groups had managed to
get money and other aid to the displaced Karen. He said that
since May, when the secret video was made, about $40,000 had been
channeled to Kayah state.
   Programs to help the Karen become self-sufficient at the new
settlement had also begun, including the building of wells, crop
growing and cottage industries such as weaving.
   The Karen were slash-and-burn subsistence farmers before the
government forced them to move.
END
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