The Palaung Land Website

Posted By admin on April 5, 2008

By: Lway Cherry

The Philippines is one of the Christian countries in the world. I have visited to several Christian churches with some of my Filipino friends. The first time when I visited to the church I felt very happy and at the same time I felt very sad. I felt very happy because I have seen that Filipino people have free religion. They can go to the Church anytime that they wanted to go. They pray very peacefully and very silent.

There is no disturb and no one is dear to destroy the people and the churches. Even though I am a Buddhist, I really like to go the Christian Churches because it makes me feel happy and enjoyable. I like to see the people stay peacefully without any conflict. But at the same time I felt very sad and very bad for Burmese people. In Burma, every religion has destroyed by the military regime. In the past, the military regime wants every Burmese to become a Buddhist, which they would like to create a Buddhist country in Burma. The Christian communities are always being discriminated against by the military regime. The Burma’s Army usually burned down their churches.

And also for the Muslim communities, the Burma’s Army fired and burned down the mosque and their villages. Most of them cannot practice their own religion. The military government always creates the problems or conflict between the Muslim and the Buddhist.

In November 2003, the Military regime has created the conflict between the Muslim and the Buddhist monks. In fact, there are two reasons why the regime creates the problem. The first important reason is, the regime doesn’t want to talk to the opposition groups, which means they don’t care about the national reconciliation in Burma. They just want to show to the international community that they are busy dealing with the internal problems. The second reason is, the regime itself has problem with Buddhist monks. Many of the Buddhist monks in Burma are against the military government because the monks realize that because of the military has ruled the country over 50 years but it is going backward and the people have been suffering a lot from the military government.

Unluckily, even though the military regime is practice the Buddhist, they do put those monks who against the regime in jail because the regime is very afraid of the monk power will organize the people and against them. The military regime is still oppressed every religion in Burma. There is no freedom of practiced any religion and there is no change and no real national reconciliation.

Lway Cherry is a member of Palaung Women Organization (PWO).

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