The Church and the Pandemic in Burma

The devastation

The success story of the public collaborating and fighting together against the virus during 2020, however, abruptly ended when the military took control of the country again on February 1, 2021, arrested top government officials, and started violent attacks against medics resisting a return to military rule by refusing to return to work under the new junta. In contradicting independent election observers, both national and international, the generals claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was massively rigged and revoked its result after the takeover. ³ With most experienced and skilled medics deserting hospitals under the junta, and with youths, who patriotically served as volunteers at hospitals, clinics, and quarantine centers before, refusing to collaborate with the military rulers, our national health-care system virtually collapsed, followed by the worst national health calamity in history when the shocking third wave of COVID started devastating and destroying families and communities across the country between June and August of 2021. In his New York Times article, Richard C. Paddock detailed the intensity of the crisis at that time. ⁴

Enduring the harrowing savages of the pandemic onslaught in the midst of national health-care system collapse, the Burmese from every religious and ethnic group lived through a living hell between June and August, with possibly tens of thousands of preventable deaths because of an acute shortage of oxygen and other life-saving medical supplies. In underscoring the magnitude of that extraordinary health disaster in Burmese history, UN special rapporteur Tom Andrews aptly stated, “An explosion of COVID cases, including the Delta variant, the collapse of Myanmar’s healthcare system, and the deep mistrust of the people of Myanmar of anything connected to the military junta are a perfect storm of factors that could cause a significant loss of life in Myanmar.” ⁵

The severity of that catastrophe decimating families and communities in northern Chin State and western Sagaing Region seemed apocalyptic as local residents who tested positive for the virus were forced by a military night curfew and health-care collapse to die at home without access to even modest medical assistance and supplies, especially life-saving oxygen. ⁶ It was painful, outrageous, and terrible that when people became so desperate to save their loved ones, their military rulers lacked the will and the empathy to help them, which led to hundreds of absolutely unnecessary deaths. ⁷ The historical place of the ethnic Chin, Kalay, the epicenter of the virus at that time, is home to the largest Chin population in Burma, and when it faced the single worst devastation of that tragedy, churches became devastated according to priests and pastors. Some of my former students who served as pastors at Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches in Kalay told me that dozens of their church members died of the virus, and Christian cemetery workers were inundated with burials.

The explosive storm of that catastrophe in the extreme west spread quickly to the rest of the country, accordingly shocking and ravaging villages, towns, and cities. The apartment where I lived (Yangon) was close to Insein road, and every day in June, July, and early August, ambulance sirens virtually never stopped, presumably collecting and transferring bodies of residents who died at home to cemeteries and bringing privately owned life-saving medical supplies for those desperate for oxygen to breathe. When underlining how the coup upended the national health-care system, eminent medics playing key roles in leading a vigorous response to the prior waves of the virus later recounted: EM specialists have led the clinical COVID-19 response in Myanmar. Until recently, our busy public emergency departments were performing screening, testing, and early critical care for patients with COVID-19. In collaboration with global health partners, our systems were robust, resource stewardship was sound, and an immunization program had commenced. Since the military takeover, however, the COVID-19 response has stalled. ⁸

Junta forces, meanwhile, hunted down medical professionals resisting military rule, whereas the virus continued destroying families and communities, which means the junta attacked the virus and medical professionals at the same time. Their actions proved they are far beyond reason, for every thinking person knows that one cannot attack the pandemic and medics concurrently. The predictable but outrageous outcome was that the virus became effectively out of control at the cost of countless lives. ⁹ Unwilling and unable to contain the virus, the junta covered it up by failing to report the true number of deaths, which provoked charity groups on the frontlines of the fight against the virus to dispute junta reports. Social workers and philanthropic groups in Kalay, for instance, reported some 400 residents died from the virus in June alone, whereas the Ministry of Health and Sports under the junta reported only 11 deaths during the same period. ¹⁰ In debunking the underreported number of deaths tallied officially by the junta ministry, an independent newspaper interviewing many workers at major cemeteries in Yangon also reported in early August that within a matter of two weeks of July 2021, about 17,000 Yangon residents died from the virus. ¹¹

The same military has a long history of withholding information from the public and massively downplaying the seriousness of any national episodes that could potentially highlight their viciousness, weakness, and misjudgments. The number of people who died from the virus exceeded ten thousand by the first days of August 2021, according to their official data record. ¹² This is, however, almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. The truth is that nobody knows Burma’s COVID-19 death toll, but it could be as high as 50,000, considering the accounts by cemetery workers of the death toll from residents suspected of being infected with the virus and thousands of deaths every day in June, July, and early August. In stressing what happened at that time, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo tweeted, “Hospitals are full. Cemeteries have long queues of dead bodies. Many die without saying good-bye, without seeing loved ones. It looks like apocalyptic.” ¹³ Adding to public outrage at the generals, the junta manipulated the virus itself to subjugate popular resistance to its brutal rule. When junta forces arrested and tortured political detainees to death, they usually told family members they died of the virus. ¹⁴

The story of the worst health crisis didn’t end in Kalay, as the virus started attacking national population centers, especially Yangon. The situation in Yangon was so severe at that time that social welfare organizations taking the lead in response to the virus became inundated with collecting and bringing dead bodies for cremation. One of such groups told a local newspaper, Myanmar Now, “Normally, our group would only have to deal with 20 to 25 bodies a day, but now it’s become more than 45 to 50 these days, and sometimes we have even had to close our office.” ¹⁵ Instead of battling the disease by extending clinics and hospitals, supporting medical professionals, and providing coronavirus patients with much-needed medical resources to save them, the junta built ten new crematoriums in Yangon alone to be able to cremate over 3,000 bodies a day, which infuriated those who lost their loved ones recently. ¹⁶ They also believed religion was the best remedy for that crisis as they urged people being decimated by the horror of the virus to recite religious verses for protection and healing and seek “refuge in Buddha.” ¹⁷

That the current military rulers have little regard for the public is a powerful reminder of the prior military junta that, in 2008, failed to warn local residents in the delta region of the imminent and deadly natural disaster from Cyclone Nargis, and repeatedly denied the traumatized survivors access to life-saving aids from national and international aid groups. It must be added that race played a role in how the then junta responded to that tragedy. Ashley South writes that the former generals neglected the victims partly because most of them were the Karen. ¹⁸ The Burmese never forget that that tragedy took 140,000 lives and their military rulers had not expressed a modicum of regret. The lives of the people are, of course, unimportant to them. Another reason they underreported the death toll from the virus is that they don’t want to be held accountable for the ramifications of their continuing onslaughts on medics and hospitals.

Shattered churches

The third wave of COVID had the enduring impact of battering churches still reeling from the immense afflictions of the crippling economic and human costs of political violence stemming from the takeover. Burma has faced economic downturn in the immediate aftermath of the previous waves and the coup, with churches and seminaries being severely affected. Like many brave and patriotic citizens, thousands of Christians left their cherished jobs as part of the civil disobedience movement against the military dictatorship, while the sudden breakdown of numerous private businesses deprived many others working at domestic and foreign firms of regular incomes, which made things very difficult for ordinary families to put food on the table. ¹⁹ They know well the high price of resisting the generals, known for ruthlessness and barbarism, but they are willing to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, if need be, for freedom and democracy, historically because they suffered extreme violence and knew the likes of living under military autocracy. In other words, after enduring systematic marginalization, persecution, and repression during the previous military rule (1962–2011), ²⁰ they are determined not to allow the same military to rule and abuse them and their future generations at will.

Churches and seminaries saddled with financial pressure, meanwhile, faced heartbreaking loss of precious lives as the third wave started savaging the country. Myanmar Institute of Theology (MIT) lost sixty-one of its community members (current students, graduates, parents, and siblings of faculty, staff, and students) within a period of less than three months. The outrageous oxygen shortages, a direct result of the junta weaponizing the virus against the public, forced them to die at home instead of being treated at hospitals. The MIT faculty council email became filled with news and notices about the passing of its community members, and its Facebook page became packed with almost endless obituaries. MIT lost one of its members every other day, on average, and three times it held a memorial service online for the grieving families. Christian colleges and seminaries elsewhere, no doubt, endured devastation not different from that of MIT.

Individual churches, likewise, lost thousands of their members, as the virus became uncontrollable after the junta intentionally used it against their own people by preventing coronavirus patients so desperate to continue breathing from access to life-saving oxygen. In order to better understand the enormity of the suffering endured by churches at this time over the virus, I contacted four Baptist churches with over one thousand members each: Bethel Baptist Church, Hakha; Kachin Baptist Church, Yangon; Thamine Karen Baptist Church, Yangon; and Ywama Baptist Church, Yangon. My findings revealed that the virus had become so catastrophic for churches that it would forever leave a gaping wound in the hearts of Burmese Christians. In terms of death toll, Bethel Baptist Church and Kachin Baptist Church lost 30 and 28 members, including multiple pastors, to the virus. ²¹ Thamine Karen Baptist Church and Ywama Baptist Church lost 49 and 42 members, respectively. ²² That means that within a matter of less than three months, the four churches lost 149 members altogether, and it is a sure thing that other churches also endured the ferocity of the same virus.

In displaying the extent of the shocking horror of that disaster for Chin churches, Chin church leaders somberly told me that about 250 Chin priests, pastors, and nuns died of the virus. ²³ Living in much of lower Burma, one of the epicenters of the crisis, Karen churches similarly became devastated, with church leaders telling me that the Karen Baptist Convention (KBC) alone lost over 200 pastors to the virus. ²⁴ Kachin churches in the north seemed less exposed to the savages of the virus compared to that of Karen and Chin churches, with KBC leaders saying they lost no more than 40 pastors. ²⁵ Overall, reflecting the agony of churches savaged by both the virus and the viciousness of their rulers, the number of priests, pastors, and nuns died from the virus within three months would be somewhere between 600 and 800. ²⁶ If they had had the benefit of civilian government, many of them would never have been forced to die, which means our military rulers have been directly responsible for that catastrophe. It is a certain thing that churches will take years to fully recover from this crisis shaking the foundation of Burmese Christianity.

Like many others facing agonizingly the catastrophic storm of that crisis and losing multiple family members, MIT scholar Naw Lily Kadoe lost her sister, Naw Rosie Kadoe, and brother, Saw David Kadoe. She told me that an extraordinary upsurge in death from the virus forced them to give the remains of her brother and sister to municipal workers. Min Uk, my childhood friend, had kidney problem for years and came to Yangon in early 2021 for dialysis. His doctor told him he would die if he tested positive for the virus, because he would no longer be allowed to enter the dialysis center. He then tested positive for the virus and returned home immediately, as he wanted to be buried in his village near Kalay. He died after living with his family for five days. Sadness upon sadness, hundreds of people with chronic diseases, like him, so often found themselves being forced to stop living as they were effectively deprived of medical services and facilities they well deserved. Furthermore, some pregnant women sadly testing positive for the virus unnecessarily died after being denied much-needed medical care while giving birth. ²⁷

The deplorable disregards of the selfish and corrupt military rulers for the common people during the pandemic would, after all, mean children will grow up without parents, parents will live the rest of their lives without children, and husbands and wives will move on without their spouses. The premature death of my friend Rev. Saw Hay Mu Htoo, on July 29, 2021, is a case in point, as he and his wife died of the virus almost at the same time, leaving behind their two young children, ages eleven and thirteen. His parents and the parents of his wife also died of the same virus; within a period of three months, all six of them passed away. ²⁸ Never forget that the pandemic would not have been able to batter and destroy so many families, churches, and societies had the self-serving generals not let it, had they not attacked medical professionals, had they not deprived people of basic life-saving oxygen and other medical supplies, had they not sparked political crisis in the first place.

The acute absence of in-person worship for almost a couple of years, meanwhile, not only destructively affected church financial resources for activities normally undertaken in the past, but also profoundly robbed church members, especially senior ones, of space so crucial to social and emotional ties. In accordance with preventive measures and guidelines from the previous government to curb the virus, churches stopped in-person worship since May 2020 and shifted to entirely online worship. Economic freefall also hit hard families, churches, associations, and organizations usually supporting and funding seminaries, including MIT. The construction of an eight-story building was, for instance, underway in February 2021, and the new reality of economic meltdown afterward tied the hands of MIT leadership and finally forced them to change the original plan to a seven-story building. The reason was simple: many families, churches, and partners supporting MIT before were no longer able to do so.

Political turbulence and the COVID-19 third wave deepened the already searing plight of families and churches in various areas across the country. During the prior waves of the virus, churches proudly sent youths to serve as volunteers at quarantine centers, hospitals, and clinics in cities and towns run by the civilian government. Individually, many Christians, particularly youth and medical personnel, likewise, joined their fellow citizens in backing medics and government officials on the frontlines of the dogged battle against the virus by serving as volunteers in various ways and capacities. It is hard to exaggerate how greatly the caring and patriotic acts of churches at that time symbolized grace, mercy, and hope in the face of that brewing national health crisis. But everything has changed since February, as church youth swiftly joined unwavering but peaceful protests on the streets in cities, towns, and large villages across the country for a return to freedom and democracy, and many of them got jailed or killed, while others ended up in armed civilian resistance groups. ²⁹ It was incredibly outrageous that two MIT students, Cung Biak Hum and L Hkun Zau Lum, were brutally killed, while many other MIT students were arrested and put behind bars. ³⁰ Being actively hunted down by junta forces day and night, those still in urban centers, especially Yangon, Mandalay, and Naypyidaw, have been on the run or in hiding.

Armed resistance to the junta lies beyond the scope of this work, but let me concisely discuss how Christians respond to the takeover militarily to shed light on the role of Christians in the protracted course of the spring revolution for freedom and democracy. The Chin, Kachin, Karen, and Kayah, who numerically represent the vast majority of Christians, have fiercely fought the junta with courage and pride and reportedly inflicted enormous losses on their militarily superior enemies, illuminating the will, resolve, and resistance of Christians to military dictatorship. The reasons driving them to fight against the junta are that they have always been prodemocracy and freedom, social memories of repression and suffering under prior military rule remain still fresh in their minds, ethnic armed organizations among these groups maintain strong ties with their own people. They believe that enduring peace and prosperity will never come under the illegitimate and hated junta. In response to their notable resistance, the junta has deployed artillery, heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and air strikes to attack them, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including children, burning villages, raping women, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. ³¹ Given the enormous scale and seriousness of disruption and turmoil triggered by violence in upland Burma, where most Christians live, many people will not return to churches anytime soon.

Christian responses

Dire national crisis like this requires the robust responses from churches to assist the populace, especially the most vulnerable, because despite being devastated, they remained an important source of hope for the distraught people. In the face of enormous challenges, churches and seminaries, indeed, spared no effort to serve the poorest and least in places around the country. In direct reaction to the surging health tragedy that claimed thousands of lives every day in Yangon, where tens of thousands of the Chin live, Chin church leaders, for instance, formed Chin Covid-19 Rescue Team (CCRT) in early August 2021, managed to procure Covidshield vaccines from India, and inoculated thousands of the Chin. ³² They absolutely played a pivotal role in saving lives, lessening financial burdens, and invigorating emotional stability for a small community left to fight alone for survival.

Chin churches in western Burma, meanwhile, faced inexcusable difficulties as residents were forced to choose between watching helplessly the slow but almost sure death of their loved ones at home and trying to bring oxygen tanks from Mandalay to save their family members by risking possible arrests, tortures, and worse. ³³ Junta soldiers patrolling highways linking cities and towns have always been notorious, and a threat to locals traveling there was real. Ethnic and religious ties between the diaspora Chin and their brethren in Burma played a vital part here, because in order to alleviate the increasing sufferings of Chin communities in northern Chin State, the Chin Baptist Churches USA (CBCUSA) raised funds from member churches and likeminded individuals and bought an oxygen plant. It must be also said that Chin American families sent hundreds of thousands of US$ every month to their relatives and families back home struggling to survive under absolute military rule defined by extreme violence and growing hunger.

Under the leadership of the American Baptist Churches USA, the CBCUSA, along with other diaspora Burmese American churches, formed the Burma Advocacy Group and asked US senators to become sponsors of the Burma Bill, meaning Chin American churches have a considerable influence when it comes to US foreign policy toward postcoup Burma. ³⁴ It must be stressed that Chin American churches have been profoundly committed to supporting the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma, both because of painful memories of ethnic and religious persecution under prior military rule, which forced them to flee their homes and seek security in the United States after wandering in SE Asia for so long, remain still fresh in their hearts and minds, and because they know well what would happen to their brethren after the infamous military took control of the state. And they have the dynamic support of US senator Mitch McConnell, who recently recounted that his commitment to democracy in Burma remains unwavering when he met with delegates of some 10,000 Burmese Americans in Kentucky. ³⁵ A Southern Baptist, he maintains close ties with many Burmese Baptists and stands for religious freedom for minorities, like the Chin, Kachin, and Karen. ³⁶ The ruling junta is terrorizing and decimating its own people at home, but it seems powerless to stop diaspora Burmese communities like Chin Americans from joining the popular fight against its brutal rule.

American Baptist missionaries, of course, evangelized the once-illiterate Chin, which has not only revolutionized Chin society and history beyond recognition, but also sustained religious, social, and historical bonds between American and Chin Baptists ever since. ³⁷ Because of Buddhist identity politics and tribal loyalty, Chin Christians have consistently faced religious persecution and ethnic exclusion since independence, and tens of thousands of them accordingly left their homeland behind and resettled permanently in the United States and other Western countries. With over 30,000 members, the CBCUSA is the largest diaspora Burmese Christian organization in the world, and Chin Americans have consistently supported freedom and democracy in Burma and sent humanitarian aids to Chin IDPs in the borderlands between India and Burma.

Meanwhile, Kachin communities in the extreme north of the country endured the damaging ramifications of the virus, with Kachin Baptist churches playing a key role in saving lives and curbing the outbreak of the pandemic. Among multiple measures they undertook to contain the virus, KBC leaders set up the COVID-19 emergency care center at Nayang, Myikyina, and treated countless coronavirus patients. ³⁸ And they instructed member churches to help control the virus in their respective places and bought an oxygen plant to provide much-needed oxygen to coronavirus patients in the Myikyina area. They told me they bought the plant late, for some reason, but added, “better late than never!” ³⁹ In order to ease economic pressure facing families, many Kachin churches supported their members financially, provided food to members who tested positive for the virus, and in some case, arranged inoculation. ⁴⁰ Thamine Karen Baptist Church and Ywama Baptist Church likewise provided basic supplies, including rice and cooking oil, to each member of their respective communities and delivered food, medicines, and oxygen tanks to members testing positive for the virus, underscoring how Christians shared their burdens as well as their resources to survive together. They, after all, offered crucial services, especially oxygen tanks and food supplies, to vulnerable neighbors and coronavirus patients. ⁴¹ No doubt, many other churches in metro Yangon and elsewhere likewise helped one another, shared what they have to survive the savages of the virus with a government lacking the will to save lives, and delivered life-saving oxygen tanks to coronavirus patients.

The economic cost of the political crisis, along with the virus, led concurrently to the rise of hunger among the poorest in urban centers, as well as in restive upland areas. It must be noted that tens of thousands of people left their remote rural villages and moved to different parts of metro Yangon in recent years to seek better job and education opportunities. This internal migration from rural backwaters to urban centers must be understood in the context that only 33.5 percent of the national population lived in urban areas as of December 2016. ⁴² Most recent migrants worked at domestic and foreign factories, lived mostly in Hlaing Tharyar, and supported their relatives in the villages. While the migrants were chasing their dreams of living better lives, the coup upended everything for them, given that many of them lost their jobs overnight. Some returned to their villages, where underdevelopment, poverty, and violence awaited them, while many others chose to remain in Yangon without regular income.

The tragedy of junta-made hunger, then, requires immediate social services, and some seminaries in Yangon provided much-needed food supplies and other services to families and communities in displaying solidarity with the public, mostly those facing near starvation. In seeking to distribute purely humanitarian aids to the most vulnerable, some MIT faculty, for instance, formed the Crisis Response Committee (CRC), delivered rice, cooking oil, and beans to families, churches, and communities in metro Yangon, and sent clothes and funds to the most needy in other parts of the country. They received donations from individuals, families, and churches inside and outside Burma, and spent 102,499,925 kyats (= approx. US$60,000) as of March 2022. ⁴³ To relieve the miseries of some Yangon residents who struggled to put food on the table, Pwo Karen Theological Seminary (PKTS) similarly donated rice, cooking oil, eggs, potatoes, and other basic food commodities. With each passing week and month, the economic crisis also deprived small churches and orphanages of their financial resources, and PKTS assisted some fifty pastors, who no longer got payment from their own churches, and supported two orphanages. ⁴⁴

Furthermore, escalating armed conflict between junta forces and determined civilian resistance fighters, along with some ethnic armed organizations, in Chin, Kachin, Karen, and Kayah states, has displaced hundreds of thousands of residents. In many ways, regional Christian organizations as well as local churches have assisted those displaced civilians, particularly children and women. ⁴⁵ In illustrating the depth and scale of suffering facing churches in upland Burma, about 20 percent of the Chin state population fled their homes, and more than half of the entire population in Kayah state became displaced by the end of January 2022. ⁴⁶ A symbol of resistance to military rule, Thangtlang, a small hilltop town in Chin state, became deserted as its residents, including my relatives, left their homes and sought refuge elsewhere after junta troops killed many locals and burned down homes during fighting between Chin resistance fighters and junta forces. ⁴⁷ Thanks to centuries of ethnic, religious, and social ties between the Chin and the Mizo, tens of thousands of Chin refugees crossed the western international border, and their ethnic brethren in Mizoram State of India embraced them with open arms. They keenly held the view that they shared the same ancestry, belonged to the same country before the British divided the land of their ancestors into modern Burma and India, and still have intermarriage. ⁴⁸

The vast majority of Burmese Christians are from ethnic minorities, the Chin, Kachin, Karen, and Kayah, and these four states, out of seven ethnic states, emerged as the stronghold of fierce resistance to military dictatorship, an audacious and stiff opposition military rulers perhaps did not expect when they seized power. Known for being willing to kill innocent people, including children, destroy villages and towns, and attack religious places to remain in power, the junta frequently bombed churches, where people sought refuge, torched villages, and massacred hundreds of people in upland Burma. And it burned down churches, along with over 600 homes, in Thangtlang and elsewhere in Chin State and attacked numerous churches in Kayah State with rockets, killing people seeking refuge in the sanctuary. Junta soldiers, for instance, killed four and injured eight residents hiding in the sanctuary when they shelled a Catholic church in Kayah state. ⁴⁹ This is the price of resisting military dictators disgracing and brutalizing modern Burma, and it is also more of the same for minorities repressed and abused under prior military rule.

Overall, the political crisis stemming directly from the February coup amid the virus has cursed Burma, and I cannot put into words the destruction of the country and its people apart from the generals and those with ties to them. The banality of military rule, meanwhile, met the strength, endurance, and resilience of Christians, who amplified their humble resources to help each other and their neighbors in the midst of unrivaled health calamity, extreme violence, and rising hunger. Not only have they embodied empathy, hospitality, care, and service in time of deep national crisis, but they have also saved countless lives, symbolized hope in darkness, and epitomized the best in Christianity.