History of the Zomi
Historically Zomi, meaning “People of Zo,” is an
ethnic group with many dialects residing primarily in Chin State, Burma. There
is an estimated 150,000 Zomi people in Burma. About 80,000 reside in the
Manipur and Mizoram States in India. Others are scattered all around
the world in countries such as USA, Canada, Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia. The Zomi people
fled their homeland due to persecution, forced labor, and torture.
Persecution
As 99% of the Zomi people are Christian, the
military government’s persecution of them is severe. The government destroys
the churches, cuts down crosses erected by the Zomi people on the mountains and
peaks, and gives orders to close the churches. Some military personnel arrest
people without conviction and detain them until they can pay a large bribe.
The military junta which made its way to power
through a bloody coup in 1988 has ruled the country at gunpoint. Preoccupied by
the idea of “national unity or unifying the country,” Burma’s military regime
has embarked on a policy of creating a single national identity based on the
policy of “Amyo, Batha, Thatana” or “One race, One Language, One Religion” in
other words “to be a Burman is to be a Buddhist” through assimilating all
identifiable ethnic minority groups into the mainstream Burman society, a
dominant ethnic group with which the regime identifies itself.
Today, the impact of Christianity is not only
confined within the spiritual and cultural contexts of the Zomi, it manifests
itself as a uniting force for different Zomi communities. With their conversion
to Christianity, the Zomi embraced one another as members of a community of
faith in Christ. At the same time, there developed a new self-consciousness and
political awareness of Zomi cultural homogeneity, thus providing a new
framework for Zomi nationalism.
Since the first Zomi conversion to Christianity in
the early 1900s following the arrival of American missionaries, Christianity
has been deeply entrenched in Zomi society and has become part of the Zomi
cultural identity. Burma’s ruling military regime is systematically persecuting
Zomi Christians in order to replace Christianity with Buddhism and assimilate
them into mainstream Burman culture. Evidence demonstrates that the military
regime is using religious persecution as a tool of ethnocide against Zomi
Christians.
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