A Chin Perspective: The Reality of Terror
My interview with Mark provided listeners with an insightful look into Chin culture, history, people, and religion. A religious and ethnic minority in Myanmar, he described not only the experience of facing oppression, but also the disbelief that even many of his close Bamar friends voiced when he tried to explain what the Tatmadaw was doing in his native lands. Now, unfortunately, Mark notes that the entire country has come to experience the pure evil and terror of this military.
“The core belief of Buddhists, it’s very peaceful. I love it.”
“I have known very good monks in my life. I have worked very closely with them. So the core belief of Buddhists, it's very peaceful. I love it. Those who really study about real Buddhists, we don't have many problems. We don't have much against each other, in terms of belief.
On the other hand, there is the minority experience. Before, if we said, ‘The military has come into to our Chin Hills and they destroyed our crosses and our churches.’ Well, [my Burmese friends] couldn’t feel that tension or the brutality, as we have faced it. So in that time, we just needed to explain it to them.
It's like they are just reading a newspaper, because they never felt it.
So after this February coup, we now work hand in hand together. They suffer a lot, and then they come to realize that because the propaganda of the military is very strong among the Burmese people, that when we say how cruel the military is in our land, they couldn’t believe it when we said that they raped our people. They said ‘Ah, is that really like that?’
They were looking at us as though we are lying to them!
But at that time, I can understand it, because this is an experience they never faced. Because these are not the things that they heard as to what the military does, or what the monks which covered the military can do.
They never heard of it!
So this current time they faced all this in practice, and then they come to understand about how the minority had suffered, and how the powerless people have been tortured in other parts of the country.”