03/26/2012 Burma (CSW) – On 13 March the Burma Army ransacked Sin Lum Pang Mu Baptist Church in Pang Mu village, located in Bhamo district.
According to Reverend Jangmaw Gam Maw, pastor of Pang Mu Church, soldiers from the 33rd battalion of the Burma Army’s 88th Infantry Division burned bibles, destroyed church property, and stole a video player, loudspeakers and villagers’ belongings. The soldiers claimed that the property belonged to a Kachin Independence Army outpost. They also took money from the church donation boxes.
The pastor and over 1,000 church members from Pang Mu village had abandoned the village for Mai Ja Yang IDP camp on 19 November 2011.
On 10 March, Burma Army soldiers disrupted a Christian conference and threatened a Member of Parliament (MP) at gunpoint in western Burma’s Chin State, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO).
More than 1,000 delegates from 80 local branches of the Mara (Chin) Evangelical Church at Sabawngte village, in a remote area of Matupi township, southern Chin State, had gathered for the conference, which had official permission. CHRO reports that several Burma Army soldiers disrupted the meeting and rebuked the village headman for not reporting the event to the army camp. When Pu Van Cin, an MP from the Ethnic National Development Party, saw the soldiers confronting the village headman and tried to intervene, he was threatened at gunpoint.
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