The report entitled “‘Threats to Our Existence’: Persecution of Ethnic Chin Christians in Burma” exposes a decades-long pattern of religious freedom violations and documents other serious human rights abuses such as forced labour, torture, and other cruel and inhuman treatment, forcing thousands of Chin to flee their homeland.
The discriminatory state institutions and ministries of previous military regimes continue to operate in the same way today, including coercion to convert to Buddhism and the destruction of Christian crosses in Chin State. Burma’s Ministry of Religious Affairs imposes discriminatory regulations on constructing and renovating Christian infrastructure.
Chin students are prevented from practising Christianity while at the schools and have been coerced to convert to Buddhism, primarily via the threat of military conscription. Students are often forced to shave their heads and wear monks’ or nuns’ robes, CHRO said. “These schools are designed to facilitate a forced assimilation policy under the guise of development. The schools appear to offer a way out of poverty but there is a high price to pay for Chin students. They are given a stark choice between abandoning their identity and converting to Buddhism, or joining the military to comply with the authorities’ vision of a ‘patriotic citizen’. ”
CHRO urged the government to abolish the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the militarycontrolled Education and Training Department under the Ministry for Border Affairs. CHRO also called on the government to reallocate those resources to education and to include ethnic minority languages in the national curriculum.
2012.09.05 Chin Human Rights Organization
2012.09.05 The Irrawaddy - Christian Chin Coerced to Buddhism