In Myanmar the people especially Christians continue to live a threatened life under junta government. It has been reported that on 18th December, 2009 in Ship Village (Shiplo) under Lahe Township, Sagain Division of upper Myanmar, the whole villagers were asked to group in the monk’s compound whereby the statue of Buddha was placed in front of the crowd in a mat. Then in the presence of world villagers the Christians were forced to worship the statue of Buddha and after that those Christians were also forced to sign or give thump impression with the promise that they would no longer profess Christianity and pray to Jesus Christ. If they do again they had been warned to leave the village.
Since then the village has been declared as Buddhist village. As a sign of this declaration, all the male member villagers gathered fired muscle loading guns shot in the air. This is to show that they had triumphed over Christians. This evil design was engineered by one Samo, a leader from Lahe Township with the co-operation of monk and Ship village leaders.
As a result, the Christians at Ship have migrating to nearby villages especially to International trade centre, Pangsha and other adjoining Christian villages. Among the Naga inhabited areas in Myanmar, Lahe district is the one which has less Christian population. Taking the advantage, the junta government has posted monks in all the villages of the area and closely monitoring the people of the area so as to prevent people turning to Christianity. Now with likely to return the democracy in the country (Myanmar) and the general election is due in the month of May 2010 (as per declaration), the leaders are looking for becoming elected members and are trying all means to win the voters by declaring less Christian influence villages a Buddhist one, taking the advantage of junta government’s attitude towards Christianity.
Pray for the Christians in Myanmar to stand firm and faithful to God in the midst of persecution.
Pray that the coming general election will be fair and free that people can elect the right and God fearing leaders and true democratic government will be formed.
Pray that Myanmar will be opened free for the gospel of Jesus Christ.