(Photo: Getty/iStock)
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has renewed its call for urgent international action as Myanmar’s military intensifies its campaign against Christian and other minor religious communities.
CSW and the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Network report that since the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s armed forces have deliberately destroyed more than 220 churches and killed at least 85 clerics, mainly through airstrikes, shelling, and torture.
Chin State, one of Myanmar’s few Christian-majority regions, has become a particular focus of military violence.
Entire congregations have been displaced as villages are bombed and places of worship reduced to rubble in what CSW describes as a “scorched-earth” strategy.
In some areas, soldiers have looted places of worship, planted landmines near them, and used religious buildings as temporary barracks. The junta’s attacks have also reached urban areas.
In portions of Rakhine and Yangon, house church gatherings have been banned since 2023, and Christian communities are now being compelled to hand over weekly attendance lists and worship timetables to police officials.
Buddhist monasteries, mosques, and Rohingya Muslim communities have also come under attack.
CSW drew attention to the military’s weaponisation of the February 2024 conscription law, which has been used to forcibly recruit Rohingya Muslims — a community already subject to genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice.
The organisation reported that Rohingya civilians are being forcibly taken and exploited as human shields in combat zones, intensifying inter-ethnic hostilities and further devastating their already fragile communities.
Discrimination has also extended into disaster recovery. After a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar in March, the government’s Religious Administration Office of Mandalay announced an order permitting only “original design and dimensions” rebuilding of damaged churches and mosques — a restriction not applied to Buddhist temples.
The restriction has left many minority religious buildings, especially older Christian ones, in disrepair or ruin.
Meanwhile, the junta’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, has sought to portray himself as a protector of Buddhism while using nationalist militias such as Pyu Saw Htee to frame Christians and Muslims as foreign-backed enemies of the state.
CSW warns that this tactic — part of the military’s so-called “Four Cuts” strategy — aims to weaken community-based networks that provide food, shelter, and humanitarian support to the displaced.
The Founder President of CSW, Mervyn Thomas, said that the current situation for Christians and other religious minorities in Myanmar “cries out for urgent international action”.
“The military junta must end all indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian targets, especially places of worship, schools, and hospitals,” he said.
Mr Thomas called for the immediate repeal of the 2024 conscription law, which he said was “being used as a tool of persecution and to fuel the civil war”.
“Discriminatory” administrative orders that “block religious minorities from rebuilding their places of worship and freely practising their faith” should also be repealed, he said.
“The international community must apply targeted sanctions on the supply of jet fuel to the Myanmar military and provide humanitarian aid that bypasses the junta and flows directly to local civil society and faith-based organisations,” said Mr Thomas.
“Finally, states must support international accountability mechanisms, including emerging Universal Jurisdiction cases, such as the recent efforts in the Philippines, to investigate these attacks on religious sites as war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
He added, “As Christians around the world prayed yesterday for the persecuted church, believers in Myanmar continue to face brutal repression. The junta’s deliberate targeting of churches and pastors must be recognised for what it is — an assault on faith itself.”
