MANDALAY (UCAN): Bishop Raymond Sumlut Gam of Banmaw, in Myanmar’s troubled Kachin State, has planned Christmas visits to camps for people displaced by violent clashes between rebels and government forces.
 
The bishop said he aims to give moral support to those in internally displaced person’s (IDP) camps.
 
“I’m going to give the message of holiness and patience to the IDPs who have longed to return to their homes after getting peace,” he said.
 

MANDALAY (UCAN): Witnesses reported that the Holy Family Catholic Church and a nearby house in Kamaing Kawng Ra village in Hpakant township, Kachin State, were attacked by Myanmese military amid sporadic fighting with Kachin rebels.
 
Parish priest, Father Peter Nlam Tu, said he heard an explosion near the village on the evening of May 30 and some minutes later heard shots.
 

MANDALAY (UCAN): A largely forgotten civil war has been raging in Kachin State, Myamar, while the world’s focus has been on 700,000 Muslim Rohingya who have been fleeing a military crackdown in western Rakhine State since August 2017.
 
One of the longest-running civil wars in the world intensified dramatically in April when Myanmar’s military stepped up dry-season offensives using helicopter gunships and heavy artillery against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is yet to sign a national peace agreement with the government.

MANDALAY (UCAN): Ethnic minority groups in the Union of Myanmar have always regarded Aung San Suu Kyi, the state counsellor of the nation, as having little interest in their fate, so they believe the challenge of bringing peace to their country necessitates she develop a new concern.

MANDALAY (UCAN)  A reluctance or inability to pro-actively promote peace on behalf of the Church in the Union of Myanmar has lead Charles Cardinal Bo to say that he believes that the Church is letting the people down.

He said that religious leaders need to do more than just condemn violence or be content with a balance of fear.

MYITKINA (SE): “First of all, it is painful for any Kachin to hear the word rebel being placed together with the word Kachin,” Bishop Francis Daw Tang, from the diocese of Myitkyina in war-torn Kachin state of the Union of Myanmar, said in summing up the conflict between the government troops and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

MYITKYINA (SE): “I appeal to all parties to return to the peace negotiation, since peace is possible, peace is the only way,” Bishop Francis Daw Tang, from the war-torn diocese of Myitkyina in the Kachin state of the Union of Myanmar, said in a strongly worded appeal for peace on February 8.