Burmese Pastor Killed by Myanmar Military

Soldiers came to a farm tent outside the village.
Three of the five men inside ran, but two didn’t.
Reverend William was one of the two.

This took place on the 16th of May, a mile outside Chungcung, in the hills of Chin State, Myanmar. Rev. William had pastored Chungcung Baptist Church for twenty-five years, and he was carrying his pastoral identification card. He believed it would protect him. They took him anyway, along with another believer named Nam Ceu.

Christian leaders in Hakha appealed to the military authorities there, and in Falam, and finally to the commander of the 77th Light Infantry Division himself, the very unit that had taken their pastor off his own farmland. The Chin pastors walked up to the men who did the burning, gave their names, and asked where he was, but nobody answered.

So the church did the work itself. Two believers inside Hakha, knowing exactly what it would cost them if anyone found out, got word to the Burma Research Institute. The men had been held by a Colonel Hluan Moe Naing. They were seen with him in Hakha on June 2, and in Thantlang on June 3. The church and the families settled on June 4 as the day the two men died.

On August 26, the believers of Chungcung held a memorial in broad daylight. Pastors came the fifteen miles down from Hakha on the road the military uses, to honor him. He leaves a wife and five children.

Chungcung sits on that army road, fifteen miles from the state capital. Since the 2021 coup, the military has destroyed 118 houses in this one village and killed sixteen civilians. On October 14, 2021, soldiers occupied Chungcung Baptist Church, looted it, and wrecked part of the property. The congregation kept meeting. William pastored that ransacked building for five more years, and it was still a church when they came for him.

And this is one village. Some two million Christians are living under airstrikes and blocked aid while their churches burn.

The Chin church is holding a front line that most of us didn’t know existed. There is a widow in Chungcung tonight, and five children with a hole shaped like their father, and a congregation that has to call another man to that pulpit knowing exactly what the job costs.

[photo courtsey of persecution.org]