CSW condemns the Myanmar military junta's increasing and systematic attacks on the right to freedom of religion or belief ahead of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church on 2 November.

The junta is intentionally targeting religious leaders, communities, and sacred sites with airstrikes, scorched-earth tactics, and discriminatory policies, violating its international legal obligations. According to the FoRB Network, at least 85 clerics were killed from February 2021 to July 2025, suffering from torture, gunfire, heavy artillery, and airstrikes carried out mainly by the junta.

This campaign is waged from the air and on the ground. The junta has escalated its targeted attacks on civilian structures, with Chin State becoming a central area of violence targeted at the Christian community. Across the country, over 220 churches and dozens of Buddhist monasteries have been deliberately destroyed. This is not collateral damage but a deliberate “scorched-earth” strategy that includes bombing, arson, robbery, and the placement of landmines in places of worship.

International humanitarian law (IHL) grants places of worship additional protection and mandates that the attacker demonstrate an absolute military necessity, which the junta has failed to demonstrate. The junta has also weaponised its February 2024 conscription law to persecute the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority. The State of Myanmar, that has a case against it at the International Court of Justice for failing to prevent, and failing to punish acts of genocide, including mass killings, rape and destruction of Rohingya communities in Rakhine State, is now abducting Rohingyas, and forcing them to serve as human shields against other ethnic groups. This tactic aims to destroy what remains of their community and deliberately incite inter-communal hatred.

The junta is also waging a bureaucratic war on faith, from major cities to disaster zones. In urban areas, the junta is escalating restrictions on worship. In some parts of Yangon and Rakhine “house church” assemblies have been prohibited since 2023 and Christian communities have been forced since 2024 to submit weekly lists of attendees and worship times to the local police.

In areas affected by natural disasters, the junta takes advantage of the situation to perpetuate existing discrimination. Following the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in March 2025, the Religious Administration Office of Mandalay issued a discriminatory order in May 2025, allowing the reconstruction of mosques and churches "only to their original design and dimensions," while explicitly excluding Buddhist religious sites. This continues a pre-coup pattern of discrimination; the policy serves as a deliberate barrier for minority religions as numerous buildings, especially colonial-era churches, lack the "formal recognition" from the state needed for repair approvals, effectively causing them to fall into ruin.

The junta’s actions are backed by a propaganda blitz. While junta leader Min Aung Hlaing makes ostentatious displays of piety, he simultaneously encourages extremist nationalist militias (like Pyu Saw Htee) to frame the pro-democracy resistance as an "anti-Buddhist" or foreign-influenced threat (i.e. Christian or Muslim). This violence is a calculated component of the junta’s "Four Cuts" military doctrine. Religious communities are attacked precisely because they provide the last remaining social safety net by offering food, shelter, and medicine to the displaced.

CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: ‘As the world gathers to mark the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, the situation for Christians and other religious minorities in Myanmar cries out for urgent international action. The military junta must end all indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian targets, especially places of worship, schools, and hospitals. CSW calls for the immediate repeal of the 2024 conscription law, which is being used as a tool of persecution and to fuel the civil war, and for the repeal of discriminatory administrative orders that block religious minorities from rebuilding their places of worship and freely practicing their faith. The international community must apply targeted sanctions on the supply of jet fuel to the Myanmar military and provide humanitarian aid that bypasses the junta and flows directly to local civil society and faith-based organisations. Finally, states must support international accountability mechanisms, including emerging Universal Jurisdiction cases, such as the recent efforts in the Philippines, to investigate these attacks on religious sites as war crimes and crimes against humanity.'