The Burmese government has temporarily stopped pressing Christian churches to remove crosses on the Irrawaddy Dam construction site, in northern Kachin State, said local churches.
Authorities have not made any recent demands to have two separate crosses, placed by Kachin Baptist and Roman Catholic churches on Loiyang Bum Mountain east of the dam site removed, leaders of the two churches said.
The site is 27 miles north of the Kachin capital, Myitkyina.
The two historic crosses are over 100 years old and were constructed by the two Kachin churches in Tang Hpre, the Kachin village at the confluence of the Irrawaddy River.
The huge dam has been under construction by the Ministry of Electric Power-1 and the Asia World Company of Burma, as well as China’s state-owned China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), since December, 2009.
Leaders from the two churches were urgently called to a meeting at the Asia World Company’s office at the dam site on April 6 and 8 regarding relocation of the crosses. However, the churches refused to move them.
At the same time, the Myitkyina Zonal Kachin Baptist Convention held an emergency meeting with the leaders of the Tang Hpre Baptist Church, in Myitkyina, on April 18 and rejected the company’s plan to have the crosses removed, according to participants.
Tang Hpre Kachin Baptist Church sent an open letter with the signatures of 85 elders of the Baptist and Catholic churches of the village to the government office of Myitkyina District on April 6th, to stop the relocation of the crosses.
The open letter, signed by Rev. Brang Nu, the pastor of the village, suggested the authorities raise the issue with the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) and Myanmar Christian Council (MCC).
Church leaders in Tang Hpre said the two churches’ followers are upset because Mading Zung Kyang, Vice-chairman of the Myitkyina Christian Council (MCC) recently suggested the two churches remove the crosses in support of the authority’s demands.
In Christian-dominated Kachin communities in Burma, church leaders are increasingly being criticized by their followers for supporting the military-backed government rather than their followers.
Tang Hpre villagers will continue to strongly oppose removal of the crosses as well as the forced relocation of villagers by dam construction, said two churches’ leaders.
