Myanmar's war-torn disaster
Quake damage, U.S. immigrants, and some nice news
Rescue work following a quake is some of the most daunting work in the world. It takes a crew of trained specialists, sniffer dogs, sonar equipment and seismic readers, patience and keen senses—methodology of the first order merging with gut instinct of man and beast—and all while timing is critical. The window for live rescues following an earthquake is typically 72 hours. Years ago in Turkey after a quake near the Sea of Marmara, I watched two overnight rescues end in failure where there had been signs of life, exhausted family members collapsing into grief.
Yet on Tuesday, 91 hours after a 7.7 magnitude quake struck Myanmar on March 28, rescue workers saved a 63-year-old woman from the rubble of a building in the capital, Naypyitaw. Nine hours later, a crew pulled a man alive from the rubble of a hotel in the capital. In devastated Saigang a man also survived five days before he was hauled out.
Rescuers are battling not only the destruction and the clock as the number dead this week passed 3,000, but a military junta that’s continued attacking villages and blocked aid in hard-hit areas after the quake.
Theologian Lesslie Newbigin wrote, “It is a terrible misunderstanding of the Gospel to think that it offers us salvation while relieving us of responsibility for the life of the world, for the sin and sorrow and pain with which our human life and that of our fellow men and women are so deeply interwoven.”
Within hours of the quake—the largest to hit Myanmar in more than a century—military jets bombed sites near the epicenter at Mandalay. A military spokesman said the Tatmadow, the military regime that retook the country in a 2021 coup, “will continue to take necessary security measures.” It continued airstrikes through the crucial window for reaching survivors, while its ground troops fired on a Chinese Red Cross convoy trying to deliver food and medicine to survivors.
For four years the junta has fought armed ethnic groups fighting its takeover who operate under a government-in-exile known as the National Unity Government. With the quake and aftershocks, the ethnic groups declared ceasefires, and the military eventually agreed to a 21-day ceasefire on April 2.
Aid groups say they are concerned the truce won’t stick. Free Burma Rangers head David Eubank provided to reporters photographs of victims killed in airstrikes on April 2 and April 3 after the ceasefire went into effect. Eubank and a team of medics were in southern Shan state when the quake struck, and he said airstrikes continued to the north and across the border in Karenni State. “We have two kinds of devastation, one natural and one unnatural and completely manmade,” he said.
Despite those attacks, U.S.-based Partners Relief delivered rice, tarps, drinking water, and supplies to people living near Inle Lake in Shan State, where 2,700 homes had collapsed. A Partners staff member said it was the first help to reach the area. “We are concerned the military may try to stop aid from coming in,” he said.
The U.S. government had a slow draw on responding to the disaster. At a briefing three days after the quake, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce could not confirm whether a team dispatched there had actually arrived. A senior USAID officer in the first Trump administration and former mission director to Myanmar, Chris Milligan, gives some insider perspective then and now.
More news—
United States: One out of every 12 Christians in the United States are vulnerable to deportation or could lose at least one family member, according to a new study from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. As Christian growth has moved from the global north to the global south, many of the world’s migrants have become disproportionately Christian:
“What is in the report is common knowledge. Or at least should be,” Todd Johnson, co-director of the Center and one of the report’s authors, told CT. But the “church and society need regular reminders of who immigrants really are.”
Turkey: Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, remains behind bars (and wrote an op-ed from Silivri Prison about it). Corruption charges are the latest attempt by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to cut the wings of his biggest rival. As opposition supporters continue boycotts and protests on Imamoglu’s behalf, the biggest question is why the West is silent.
Syria has sworn in a new transitional government that does not include members of the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces or the autonomous civil administration in northeast Syria. Charles Lister has a helpful rundown.
Afghanistan: For women living under Taliban rule again, resilience “is not really a choice … it’s a necessity.”
Existing within the oppression that has, once again, become the reality for women in Afghanistan, resistance and rebellion exist on a molecular level—it is not taking place on the streets for others to watch, it is happening all the time: dancing behind closed doors, making art and creating henna designs become defiant acts of personhood in the face of erasure.
Germany: I’m fascinated by the Fehmarn Belt Link that will one day connect Denmark and Germany across the Baltic Sea, and become the longest tunnel immersed underwater … 11 miles.
Thailand: Allan and Joan Eubank (parents of David Eubank mentioned above) heard a call to the mission field, but never got the call to return home. Now 95 and 92, they live surrounded by folks they led to Christ and ready with stories for visitors like me:
“When we first came to Thailand, we had no hot water and no phone,” said Joan, who was 28 years old when she joined her husband on this mission field in 1961. “To call home to talk to my folks, I stood in line once a year at midnight and waited to reach them in Texas. I paid 80 baht for three minutes [about $4 at the time]. That was our only connection to home, besides returning to the States every four years.”
Homefront: Six months after Hurricane Helene, a major road near my neighborhood reopens today, ending some traffic headaches for all of us, whew. Also, bulbs gifted from the Netherlands are blooming in damaged parks.
So grateful for your reporting Mindy. So struck by the stat you shared about 1 in 12 Christians in America are at risk of deportation or someone in their family. These are not statistics that are being openly acknowledged by most from either party or among even many Christian news outlets. Is there an available link to the study from GCTS?