Save Burma

Soldiers entering villages and killing people on sight. Landmines blowing pregnant women to smithereens. There’s no way this is really going on. The world would never tolerate this. Why haven’t I heard about this before?

These were the words flashing through my mind as I watched the fourth installment of the Rambo franchise ten weeks ago. The film portrays the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign in Eastern Burma targeting the Karen people, a situation that is every bit as bad as what’s happening in Darfur, (some argue that it’s worse) though frightfully few people know that it’s happening. Little did I know that in just eight short weeks, I’d actually be standing on the same soil as the Karen people, talking with victims of the junta’s atrocities and listening to their stories.

My wife and I are freelance Christian missionaries. In a nutshell, we travel the world and look for ways to share our faith and/or help people in practical ways. About a week after I saw the Rambo movie, I met a missionary at a conference in Texas that lives in Thailand and works among the Karen people living in refugee camps along the Thai/Burma border. At the conference, an invitation was given for volunteers to go to Thailand and teach an oral communications workshop at a Karen Bible School. At the time, my wife and I were already scheduled to spend three weeks in Brazil in November, so we didn’t think we would be able to make it. Within three weeks the door we had to travel to Brazil was slammed shut - providentially I think - and we were able to credit our tickets to travel to Thailand instead.

While in Thailand, we spent six days at a Bible School with Karen pastors in training. Many of the young men and women had been driven out of their homes when they were little children. Some told us stories about their home villages being burned to the ground. Others were too young to remember life outside of the refugee camp, but longed to return to their homeland nonetheless. The constant theme we heard over and over was that the junta troops are continuing to systematically drive Karen people out of their villages and are placing landmines in the villages to keep the people from coming back. Many of the people fear that if the world doesn’t act soon, there will be a final campaign in 2010 that will wipe their people off the map forever. That’s the year the Burmese government has given the Karen National Liberation Army an ultimatum to lay down their arms - or else.

Speculation aside, here are the facts:

- In Eastern Burma, the military regime has destroyed, burned, or relocated over 3,000 villages;

- At least one million refugees have fled the country;

- An additional million people remain inside the country as internal refugees. They face abuse in the forms of rape, torture, extortion, and murder. Many are also forced into forced labor for government projects and army campaigns - a modern form of slavery;

- The military junta in Burma has recruited more child soldiers than any other country in the world - up to 70,000;

- Sexual violence is used as a weapon of war in Eastern Burma, terrorizing thousands of women and their families;

- The United Nations Security Council has remained shamefully silent in the case of Burma, even though it has passed many resolutions on other countries in similar situations;

- The longer the UN Security Council remains silent, the more people will die.

Amazingly, we were able to go into Burma and visit a camp for internally displaced people. Though the camp is comprised of 820 people, the week before we arrived, 87 new Karen entered the camp after the junta attacked their village and planted landmines to prevent the people from returning to their homes. This tells me that the killing is not only ongoing, it’s worsening. But we can do something about it. History shows that when brutal regimes are denied the money and the weapons to carry out their atrocities, the people are able to rise up and take back their country. The U.N. must play a crucial role to make this happen.

You and I can make that happen. Go to http://www.uscampaignforburma.org and sign the petition to tell Ban Ki Moon to pass a resolution to stop the genocide in Burma. The clock is ticking. God have mercy on us all if we stand by and do nothing.

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Aaron D. Taylor is the founder of Great Commission Society and the author of “Alone with a Jihadist”, scheduled to be released in June 2009.