A Buddhist pagoda is being constructed by the Burmese ruling junta in a stronghold of the ethnic Kachin Christian armed rebels in Kachin State in Northern Burma, a source in the area said.
A 30 feet wide pagoda is being built in a Kachin Christian village called Zupmaiyang in the area controlled by Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) in the Triangle Areas in northern Kachin State, villagers told KNG.
According to Zupmaiyang villagers, a group of Burmese carpenters started the construction of the pagoda in January. The pagoda is to be completed in five years and the construction is being monitored by the junta's Commander Maj-Gen. Ohn Myint of Kachin State.
The pagoda is coming up on the main road between the junta's newly reconstructed N'Jang Yang city and Zupmaiyang village. The area falls in the KIO's armed wing, Kachin Independence Army (KIA) Battalion No. 4 under the command of KIA 1st Brigade, a villager said.
With the onset of the monsoon construction has been halted but the site is being guarded in rotation every month by Burmese army personnel in Kachin State, a villager added.
In Zupmaiyang, all residents are Christians and there are only two Burmese families who arrived in the village three years ago as settlers and are Buddhists, according to villagers.
Constructing a new pagoda in a KIO stronghold by the junta is not an unusual phenomenon and the junta, unlike the neighbouring Buddhist country Thailand, constructs Buddhist pagodas everywhere on the tops of mountains, popular tourist spots, crowded places and on main roadsides, even where no Buddhists are settled throughout Kachin State.
Ethnic Kachin Christians believe that Burma's ruling junta is into ethnic cleansing and bent on establishing Buddhism and Burmanization around Kachin State by using military muscle, local sources said.
The KIO was formed by Kachin students in Rangoon University in February 5, 1961 given their dislike of the announcement on the Buddhism to be the official state religion in 1958. The announcement was made by Burma's first Prime Minister U Nu and followed his democratic government's centralized economic policy, according to KIO officials.
