Students for the Relief of the Oppressed

“There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practiced.” This was the opening line of a document, leaked a couple years ago by the government of the military regime in power in Burma since 1962. Burma (Myanmar) is listed 5th on the Restriction of Religious Freedom Index, only behind such anti-Christian countries as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. At least four to six percent of the 55,390,000 population of this country is Christian. The majority of the rest of the country’s population is Buddhist. The government has restricted the building of churches and in 2004 it was illegal to print or import the Bible into Burma. More recently there continues to be censorship of local publications of the Bible. In 2007 a Buddhist monk, backed by the military burned down a church and in ongoing ethnic struggles, 27,000 of the predominantly Christian Karen tribe were driven from their homes. In a more recent example of the persecution of Christians in Burma, pastors in Rangoon were forced to si...

Somalia has not earned for itself an enviable reputation over the past two decades. The country has suffered from border disputes, drought and war ever since its independence and has not had a functioning government in almost twenty years. It is a nation well-known for its warlords, Islamist militia and, just recently, pirates. Last November Somali pirates successfully captured and held ransom the Sirius Star – the largest ship ever to be captured. The Saudi oil-tanker was released this last month. Other than the occasional mention in the news, most people probably associate Somalia with Blackhawk Down, a movie documenting the downing of a Blackhawk helicopter and the killing of U.S. Army Rangers by Somali militias in 1993. The newly formed government based in Djibouti has just elected Sheik Sharif Ahmed, a more moderate Islamist leader, as their president. However, he and his government face a hard task ahead of them as the Islamist militia in Somalia (Al-Shabab) are unlikely to recog...