Asia – Page 10 – FoRB in Full

‘We don’t know how we can restart our lives’ – stories from Manipur

Posted on 19/07/2023 by cswpress in Asia, India

‘On 3 May, around 10pm, we heard people throwing stones at our house. We didn’t understand what was happening. In the morning, we woke up and we were cooking. We saw that there was a frenzy outside. Everyone was walking out of their homes with their bags packed. They asked us why we were still at home and explained the situation. We were scared.’
Runa, Imphal

India’s Manipur State has been engulfed in violence for two and a half months now. Sparked by a protest on 3 May in which an estimated 60,000 people marched in opposition to the Manipur High Court’s request to the state government to send a recommendation to the central government to include the non-tribal Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category, the unrest has claimed at least 100 lives, with local sources suggesting that the death toll is significantly higher.

Thousands of homes have been burned down and tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced in a dispute over whether the predominantly Hindu Meitei community should be granted access to the same benefits afforded to the state’s typically more disadvantaged tribal communities.

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With echoes of ‘the most difficult time in North Korean history’, the international community must do more to bring about change

Posted on 29/06/2023 by cswpress in Asia, North Korea

Earlier this month, the BBC released information gathered from exclusive interviews with three individuals living inside North Korea. Their reports have brought the country back into the headlines, revealing the devastating reality of the situation for North Korean citizens since the COVID-19-triggered border closure in January 2020. They describe widespread starvation and brutal repression, without feasible means of escape.

Hanna Song from the North Korean Database Centre for Human Rights (NKDB) said in an interview with the BBC ‘This [report] takes us back to the most difficult time in North Korean history.’

Song is referring here to the widespread famine of the 1990s known as the arduous march.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was founded in 1948 under the leadership of Kim Il-Sung. The communist nation’s economy was built on a system of state control: a public distribution system for food and material goods, and a state-assigned job system dictating citizen employment.

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Reverend Dr Hkalam Samson, one of Myanmar/Burma’s most senior and internationally renowned Christian pastors.

The continued imprisonment of Reverend Dr Hkalam Samson is proof that no one is safe in Myanmar

Posted on 27/06/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Burma

By Benedict Rogers

When I heard that my friend Reverend Dr Hkalam Samson, one of Myanmar/Burma’s most senior and internationally renowned Christian pastors, had been arrested at Mandalay airport on 5 December as he attempted to travel to Bangkok, several thoughts went through my mind.

On one level I was not surprised, because the current illegal military junta, which seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021, has been even more brutal, ruthless and inhumane than any of the succession of military dictatorships that have ruled Myanmar for most of the past six decades.

On another level, due to his international connections, I thought his arrest might simply lead to a brief detention, for the purposes of interrogation. I half expected him to be released within a matter of days. This is a man, after all, who has met the President of the United States in the White House, a Minister of State in the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, parliamentarians around the world and has attended international fora including the International Ministerial Conference on freedom of religion or belief in Washington, DC in 2019.

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A sign prohibiting the entry of Protestants into the community of Cuamontax in Huazalingo Municipality of Hidalgo State, Mexico.

Chhattisgarh: A state where religious minorities live in fear

Posted on 18/05/2023 by cswpress in Asia, India

Five months after the mob violence that forced hundreds of Christians from Chhattisgarh’s tribal belt to flee their homes, victims say they are back home and safe for now, but they continue to live in fear.

On 18 December 2022, more than 20 incidents of anti-Christian violence were reported in various villages of Chhattisgarh’s Kondgaon and Narayanpur districts. Locals claimed that they were pressured to leave their religion and if they refused, they were beaten up badly, their homes were vandalised and their crops were destroyed.

According to reports that emerged later, close to a thousand Christians were forced to flee their homes and seek shelter in neighbouring districts. Some had to walk hundreds of kilometres to seek shelter in an indoor stadium.

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A series of political slogan boards erected outside Laomudeng Church in Yunnan, China.

‘The Yunnan Model’ could be an indicator that life is going to get even harder for religious and ethnic groups across China

Posted on 10/05/2023 by cswpress in Asia, China

Wang Shunping, Nu Sangdeng, San Luobo, Hua Xiuxia and Dong Mengru spent the past nine months in detention.

Their crime? Holding a handful of Christian gatherings and teaching guitar and hymns to a group of young people in their rented home in Fugong County in the Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture of China’s Yunnan Province.

Though they were released on bail on 7 May, the charges against them relating to ‘organising and sponsoring an illegal gathering’ are yet to be dismissed.

All five individuals – three men and two women – work among the ethnic Nu community, one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognised by the Chinese authorities; the three men are Nu ethnic preachers. In China, the majority of the Nu live in Yunnan, where a significant history of Western missionary activity has resulted in a large Protestant Christian population alongside the majority religions of Buddhism and tribal animism.

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