About 400 members of the Chin Christian Fellowship of Canada are meeting in Pinawa this week to worship God, take part in workshops, and pray for their co-religionists who are suffering in Myanmar.
The group, coming from across the country, is being hosted July 1-5 by the Manitoba Chin Christian Church, a congregation of about 70 members that is part of City Church in Winnipeg.
The Chin are a Christian minority group in Myanmar, where most of the population is Buddhist. They have been Christian since the late 19th century, when American missionaries came to their state, located in the eastern part of the country alongside the Indian border.
They are being persecuted by the ruling military junta, State Peace and Development Council, in an effort to drive them out of the country. Churches are being burned, clergy targeted, towns and villages bombed and people forced to flee as refugees.
One of those who fled Myanmar for a new life in Canada is Plato Van Rung Mang, secretary of the Manitoba Chin Christian Church and one of the organizers of the conference.
Van Rung Mang came to Canada with his family in 2011. The conference, he said, will be a chance for Chin Christians from across the country to worship and praise God and pray for the situation in their home country.
“We want to strengthen and encourage each other,” he said, adding members of his own family have fled Myanmar as refugees to India, where they are waiting approval to come to Canada.
“God led us to Canada, and we enjoy a lot of blessings in this peaceful country,” he said. “But we don’t want to forget our brothers and sisters in Myanmar.”
The conference is also an opportunity to help other Canadians “learn more about the situation” in Myanmar, he said, and to join Chin Christians in praying for peace.
“We want more people to become aware of what is happening,” he said, noting this is the first time the group has held an in-person conference since the pandemic.
Tim Nielsen, lead pastor at City Church, is one of the speakers at the conference.
“Chin Christians have faced many challenges under military rule,” he said, noting members of the Chin church in Winnipeg “have lost family and friends.”
Nielsen called the junta’s actions against the Chin “ethnic cleansing,” noting the same thing has happened to the Rohingya in that country — a group that has received much more media attention.
“Churches have been burned and people have lost their homes and farms,” he said. “It’s quite concerning for members of the church here in Winnipeg.”
As pastor, his goal is to “listen to them, pray for them and pray for peace,” he said.
There are about 2,000 Chin Christians in 10 churches across Canada.
According to the Chin Human Rights Organization, Myanmar’s ruling military regime “is systematically persecuting Chin Christians as part of a program to Burmanize the Chin… (The) ruling State Peace and Development Council is committing an act of ethnocide against Chin Christians by trying to destroy the Chin religious and cultural identity” through military actions, forced labor, torture, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, and extrajudicial killings.
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John Longhurst
Faith reporter
John Longhurst has been writing for Winnipeg’s faith pages since 2003. He also writes for Religion News Service in the U.S., and blogs about the media, marketing and communications at Making the News.
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