4/7/2025 Myanmar (International Christian Concern) — More than 9 million people in Myanmar have been affected by the massive March earthquake, according to the U.N. The number adds to the 20 million civilians who were already in severe need of humanitarian assistance due to a decades-long civil war.
Myanmar’s military junta, known locally as the Tatmadaw, immediately took advantage of the chaos and destruction caused by the earthquake, bombing the Sagaing area — a strategic opposition stronghold and the earthquake’s epicenter — just hours after the disaster struck.
Civilians in the area were just beginning to calculate the damage and rescue those trapped in the rubble when the aerial bombardment started. The quake destroyed nearly 80% of Sagaing.
Despite announcing a ceasefire last week, the Tatamadaw has continued to attack civilians with airplanes and helicopters, according to ongoing reports.
The Tatmadaw has also used the crisis to bolster its place on the international stage, making a rare plea for outside help and accepting aid from allied and hostile countries alike. While commendable on its face, the regime has a long history of weaponizing aid against its people and seems to be using this most recent crisis to break through a concerted international effort to press for change through forced isolation.
The United States has long led the world in imposing sanctions on the Tatmadaw while providing aid directly to the people. These efforts were recently halted as part of a larger pause in foreign assistance. A three-person American team sent to facilitate the United States’ response was fired last week shortly after arriving in Myanmar to assess the damage.
In March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released a report criticizing the Tatmadaw for its systematic repression of religious minorities and urging the international community to increase attention to the plight of the persecuted in Myanmar.
“The country has seen the displacement of over 3.5 million people in recent years,” the USCIRF report noted, “including more than 90,000 in Christian-majority Chin State, 237,200 in Kachin State, and one million Muslim-majority Rohingya refugees.” Last week’s earthquake, and the airstrikes that followed, have only increased these high levels of displacement.
Though a strong majority of the population is ethnic Burman, and an even greater percentage is Buddhist, the communities that make up the remainder are well-established, well-organized, and, for the most part predate the formation of the modern state by centuries.
In many cases, Myanmar’s ethnic minorities have taken on a distinct religious identity as well. About 20% to 30% of ethnic Karen are Christians, while other groups — such as the Chin, are more than 90% Christian. This overlap of ethnic and religious identity has created a volatile situation for believers.
Representing an extremist interpretation of Buddhism, the Burmese military has a long history of violence against the people of Myanmar, including against ethnic and religious minorities like the Muslim-majority Rohingya and Christian-majority Chin.
The junta is known to abduct children, forcing them to walk ahead of their troops through minefields. In many cases, their victims are members of ethnic and religious minority communities fighting back against the atrocities of a military that has waged a decades-long war of ethnic and religious cleansing.
Despite this support, experts believe that the Burmese military is atrophying rapidly, with as few as 150,000 personnel remaining after the loss of about 21,000 through casualties or desertions since the 2021 coup. This number is significantly smaller than previous estimates of 300,000 to 400,000 people and calls into question the junta’s ability to sustain its nationwide military campaign, especially after a series of high-profile losses in recent years.
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