Myanmar (MNN) — Ethnic and minority groups claim a victory against a harsh military junta.

Myanmar (MNN) — Earlier this month, Myanmar’s ruling military junta lost a key base in the city of Lashio in Shan State to rebel forces. The rebel alliance is largely made up of ethnic and religious minorities standing against the State Administration Council, which has used brutal tactics against civilians since seizing power in 2021. 

A man we’ll call Peter serves with A3 in Myanmar. “They’re losing a lot of men, and they’re losing a lot of land too, and mostly in Christian areas.” 

Peter says churches in the war zones are getting hit hard but non-believers are seeing Christ’s love contradict the propaganda they’ve heard about Christians.

	Protest in Myanmar against Military Coup 14-Feb-2021. (Wikimedia Commons)

“The juntas, their teachings are like, ‘They will just kill you straight away. These Christians are ruthless, they’re barbarians,'” Peter says. “But when these non-believers want to fight back, they run into the jungles, [and] it was a whole different story how these Christians welcomed them with open arms, giving them food, support, help.” 

The future is unsure, but Peter says gospel ministry is spreading for now. Churches give shelter and medical care to refugees. Pray for them.  

“We want to end this war fast, like really fast. We need support internationally, we need support for ammunitions,” Peter says. “We didn’t ask for this war — the junta bought this war to us.”

He prays every day for the airstrikes from the military junta to stop. 

“If it’s ground forces, we can fight. We win a lot of battles, and we can still take on artilleries. But the planes, the air assaults, those are very bad,” Peter says.”

“When [the military is] retreating or they’re losing, the planes don’t come to us (the rebel forces). Mostly they just go into villages or cities and bomb hospitals, bomb kindergartens, bomb schools. So then our [forces] would retreat, help the people — and on the way they will ambush us again. That’s the tactics that they were using.”

Pray for strong faith among Christians fighting in the rebel forces.

“I have friends who lost their faith because dealing with this war, [the] things that we had to do, the things that we’ve seen. It’s, it’s just ugly,” Peter says. “Some of them start questioning, ‘Where is God? Why is He letting this happen?’”

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Listen to the broadcast (top story)

Direct Link: https://a3-media.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/audio/mnn/4-5min-Aug28-2024.mp3

More Information

• This story by Katie O'Malley was originally published on 28-Aug-2024 by Mission Network News:
  https://www.mnnonline.org/news/myanmar-junta-loses-grip-on-northern-city-churches-serve-refugees/
  
• Download the audio file: https://a3-media.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/audio/mnn/4-5min-Aug28-2024.mp3
• Photos credits:
  • Photo of Lashio City in Myanmar courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
  • Protest in Myanmar against Military Coup 14-Feb-2021. (Wikimedia Commons)
    

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