City of Grace Mesa

Sonny and Millicent Thweatt are City of Grace missionaries in Thailand -- but their ministry extends to China, Burma (Myanmar) and other regions of SE Asia.  Here are excerpts of the email I received from them this morning about the situation in Burma.

I am going to pass on the information I have received from many sources here concerning the real situation in Burma.  These sources include International schools in Yangoon, Burma, our church, which has many ministries and humanitarian aid projects in Burma. Individual friends who work in Burma and from the Caren people.

The scope of the disaster is enormous.  There is at least 3100 square miles of land under the ocean that probably will never come back. The estimates are running as high as 1,500,000 deaths and could be more if the Burmese Govt. has its way. But the govt. will never let the real figure out as they don't care, and don't want the rest of the world to know. This disaster is far greater than the tsunami several years back.  We have seen videos that were smuggled out of Burma of bloated human bodies littering the river ways and rice fields and have been there for nine days now. The govt. can do something but does not. What will probably never reach the news media is that most of the people that have been affected are the Caren ethnic group and the govt. has been trying to exterminate them for decades.  If you have seen the last Rambo, those scenes are accurate.  The army finds a Caren village then opens fire and tries to exterminate every living thing.  The Caren usually work their rice fields and vegetable fields with a basket on their backs, with a few essentials, so if a raid comes they can run into the jungle at once. The Burmese army is desperately trying to keep the atrocities out of the news, so the world won't know what they have been doing for 30 years.

There are many refugee camps for the Caren on the border in Thailand, but they have been full for 25 years and won't or can't take any more refugees. The borders are locked down on the Thai, Chinese, and Indian sides. Nobody is getting in. The few supplies that are getting in, that you may have seen on TV are for propaganda.  The govt. takes the supplies and gives them to the army or puts the armies name on it and then gives it to a few Burmese villages to bribe them to vote in the election taking place now. They will not help any of the 12,000,000 Caren that live in the country.

What aid is getting in now, and has been for several days for the displaced people in Burma, is being done covertly by the Christians and the missionary organizations that work out of Thailand. There are many organizations that have been smuggling food, medicine, doctors and money for decades so they are familiar with the smugglers routes and how to get in. A non profit organization sponsored by our church has been doing relief work and orphanage work for years in Burma and has developed a sophisticated infrastructure within the country.(Our church was just informed that two of the orphanages and all inhabitants have disappeared)  There are now many people and organizations using our network to get needed food, money, medicines and other supplies into the hands of the people.

Blessings to all,

Sonny and Millicent Thweatt

City of Grace has sent an initial gift of $2,000 to one of the key church leaders in Myanmar to help with relief work.  We will be sending more funds in this coming week to those who are on the frontlines of helping those in greatest need.  Please continue to pray for the situation in this nation.