This month (September 2009) the Pope asks us ‘to pray that Christians in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar may place their trust in the Holy Spirit and so maintain the courage to proclaim the Gospel in spite of their difficulties. The author is Ashley Evans SJ, who works in Cambodia.
The people who suffered most during the Irish famine were the landless labourers. The poorest people in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are the landless rice-farmers. They work to plant, water and harvest rice on other people’s rice paddies. When a huge tropical storm hit Myanmar last year, thousands of these poor people died.
Over a year later, many there are still starving, trying to cope with an infestation of rats. Their military government does not help much. In these three countries, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, Christians are only a small minority in a large Buddhist population. Churches or places to pray are not easy to find.
When Sokhann was in grade nine of high school in Pursat province in Cambodia, she lived with her mother, four sisters, one brother and one brother-in-law in a small one-room bamboo shack, close to the Tonle Sap, the wide fresh water lake situated in the centre of the country. She had received her Christian faith from her father before he abandoned the family. As the health of Sokhann’s mother was weak, her brother-in-law, Ren, supported the whole family by taking fish from the lake for sale at the market.
The boxes of fish were too heavy for him on a meagre diet and one day his stomach tore and he fell very sick. The family rushed him to the Provincial hospital in Pursat. The hospital told the family that there was no hope. There was no need to move him to the big hospital in the capital city, Phnom Penh, as he would die anyway. However, with the help of the tiny Catholic community in Pursat, the family moved him to the parish in Phnom Penh. The brother moved into intensive care in the French-supported Calmette hospital. He was unconscious now all the time. His mother, who had abandoned him as a child, came to visit. She explained to the family how his brother had died from the same disease a few years previously. Sokhann was left alone in the shack near the lake. Everybody else had gone to Phnom Penh. Some neighbours mocked her saying that the family was stupid to use all their savings on their sick brother-in-law as he would die anyway. They should have kept the money for the funeral. Sokhann had no way of contacting her family in the city.
Each night and often during the day, Sokhann prayed for her brother-in-law. She would write her prayer in her school book and then tear the page out and burn it as an offering. She cried, but she knew that God was listening to her. She kept a small picture of Our Lady under her pillow and each night she would hold it beseeching Our Lady to help her brother-in-law who was the only support for her whole family.
About a week later, a neighbour came to see Sokhann, saying that someone had called from Phnom Penh saying that Ren had recovered already. A few days later Sokhann ran to meet her weakened but walking brother-in-law as he returned home. The villagers gathered to meet this strange sight. This man should have died but he lived. Sokhann jumped around saying that Ren had been given a new life.
The doctors told Ren that he should do no heavy work for five years. After five months he took up his old job. He is still doing that job now.
In Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, many Catholics like Sokhann live hidden and humble lives. With few churches and fragile communities, they rely on personal prayer to sustain them on their journey.
In Myanmar, the situation of the whole population is miserable, as the military junta ruling the country has severely restricted the freedom of the people to move and to learn. All the universities in the country have been closed down. The army generals have imprisoned the duly elected leader of Myanmar, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, since 1991. Last year many Buddhist monks organised a ‘saffron’ demonstration to seek basic civil rights but the leaders were arrested and beaten. Some just disappeared. A few brave Catholics joined in to support these protests.
The recent natural disasters in Myanmar have compounded the people’s suffering but have also encouraged solidarity among the different ethnic groups in the country.
In Laos, the Church is repressed by the Communist government, but the Catholics are still able to gather and pray together for a better future for themselves and the whole country.
Traditionally these three countries have been a bit afraid of their two more powerful neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam. Relationships between the races are difficult.
Sokhann, from Pursat in Cambodia, knows that personal prayer does work miracles. The Catholics in Laos and especially in Myanmar need miracles too.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (August 2009), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
