Myanmar’s Archbishop calls for greater religious freedom

(January 19, 2011) The leading prelate in Myanmar, one of the world’s most repressive nations, has called for greater religious freedom. Archbishop Charles Bo of Yangon said that every person must be able to freely exercise and to manifest, individually or as a community, their religion or faith, both in public and in private, in the teaching, in the publications, in the worship and in the observation of rites. Lamenting that Christians are forced to abandon their faith in order to receive promotions, Archbishop Bo noted that crosses are being removed from churches in some areas of the nation. He recalled that when the Church was able to operate schools, the education system in Mynamar was noted for its excellence throughout Asia. After the forced nationalization of schools, however, education in the nation was forcefully depleted and deteriorated more and more.
Since 1962, the nation has been ruled by authoritarian military regimes, which expelled missionaries and nationalized Catholic schools and hospitals in the 1960s and abolished constitutional religious freedom protections in the late 1980s. The current junta, headed by General Than Shwe since 1992, has gained a reputation for brutality. According to statistics only 1.2% of Myanmar’s 53.4 million people are Catholic. Some 89% are Buddhist, 4% are Christian, and 4% are Muslim.