Church in the World

Catholics give support to rebel monks

Burma

Persecuted Christians in Burma are showing unequivocal support for Buddhist monks who have been leading pro-democracy marches against the country's military Government, a leading human-rights activist who has just returned from the region has said.

Members of the predominantly Christian Chin tribe in western Burma have been holding pro-democracy rallies in the state capital of Hakha, mirroring those taking place across the country, said Baroness Cox of Queensbury, chief executive of the humanitarian charity Hart and a cross-bench member of the House of Lords.

Baroness Cox returned last week from the India-Burma border, where she heard first-hand accounts from Chin Burmese crossing into India of torture, rape and forced labour at the hands of the ruling military junta. Similar atrocities have been well documented in recent years in the case of the mainly Catholic Karen people of eastern Burma by the charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which organised last week's trip. The Chin were evangelised by Baptists in the nineteenth century.

On Wednesday, the military began to crack down on protesters and three monks were reported to have been killed. Protesters had been calling for an end to 45 years of one-party rule. Last Saturday 1,000 monks marched to the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition and a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been under house arrest for 11 of the last 18 years.

The monks, who are revered in Burma's Buddhist culture, were threatening religious sanctions against the Government, Baroness Cox said, such as refusing to receive alms or conduct services, which she said would be for the Government "like being excommunicated".

Archbishop Desmond Tutu likened the protests to those against apartheid and was confident they would succeed. "The courage of the people of Burma is amazing and now they have been joined by their holy men. It is so like the rolling mass action that eventually toppled apartheid. God bless all those wonderful brave people. Victory is assured. They are on the winning side, the side of freedom, justice and democracy," he said. The Cape Town archbishop, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for leading peaceful protests against apartheid in South Africa, called for the UN and the international community to pressurise the junta to engage in a process that would lead to genuine democracy and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has illegally visited the Karen state of Burma and is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Burma, said the UN should set out specific objectives and deadlines for the "savage and brutal" regime, such as the release of political prisoners, and that countries such as Russia and China should be exposed for the support they have given it.

Foreign journalists have not been granted visas to enter Burma since the protests began last month but bloggers in Burma have been outwitting government censors, who block access to news websites and web-based email, and posting photographs and videos of the protests on the internet.