Christian Karen fear that they will receive no aid

The Christian minority of the Karen, who are among the main victims of the natural disaster, are afraid that they will be at a disadvantage on account of their faith and their ethnic background when it comes to the distribution of aid supplies from government sources. This was reported by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on Thursday. „The Karen are afraid of discrimination when emergency aid is distributed because members of this tribe in other parts of the country have been engaged in armed resistance against the central government for 59 years“, warned the GfbV Asia expert, Ulrich Delius.

There were before the natural disaster some 500,000 mainly Christian Karen living on the banks of the Delta and on the islands off the coast. Most of their villages were completely destroyed by the catastrophe. It is therefore essential that priority and support should be given to the aid organisations of the Karen to ensure the effective provision of the suffering members of this largest ethnic minority in the land of Burma, which is made up of many nations. In the light of the continuing persecution of the Karen distribution of aid cannot he relied on from government agencies, particularly the army, to ensure impartial support for all those suffering.

„The distrust of the Karen is not without grounds since Burma’s military did not shrink from shooting unarmed helpers of the Karen in the year 2007 in the region affected by the civil war“, said Delius. More than 43,000 were expelled last year through the military offensives of the army in the federal Karen state in the east of Burma.

In the Irrawaddy Delta the Karen make up only a minority alongside the Burmese majority. In the country as a whole their share in the total population of 42 million is about seven million.