Dave Eubank of the Free Burma Rangers issued a clarion call for people around the globe to help those captured, tortured and fleeing the Burma army.
“The ethnic people in the mountains, though chased from their homes, also refuse to give up and continue loving and helping each other,” Eubank wrote in an email update. “Our teams and other groups move amongst the ethnic people giving medical and food support and being with them in love. The Burma military is more powerful than anyone here but we believe God is more powerful and is giving us ways to help.”
Eubank also outlined three specific ways people can help:
1) Relief for the displaced. We are providing immediate food, medical and shelter relief to ethnic people who are under attack and hiding in the mountains.
2) Support for people who have left the cities and want to be trained to go back and help their people. We help provide food, shelter and medical and communication training so they can go back and help their people stand for freedom and survive. We tell them the most important thing we have learned is to love God, love each other and not give up. We share about how Jesus has helped us not to take revenge but to act in love and keep going.
3) Support for escape. We are also helping people who are targeted for death by the regime and whose only choice is to escape.
Eubank added that first and foremost they require prayer for their team.
“We have been asked during this crisis in Burma how people can help more and what the needs are. First, we need prayer that we do God’s work God’s way, and that more help comes,” Eubank wrote.
He went on to provide specific costs for the needs outlined above:
1) Relief for the displaced: now in northern Karen State alone there are over 20,000 people in hiding. The cost of rice to feed a family for one month, a tarp to shelter them and medicine for medical care is about $100 per family. To give rice alone to 20,000 people for three months is $730,000, to give an idea of the scale of this need.
2) Support for people who have come to the ethnic areas and want training on how to help their people. We will share our testimonies of what Jesus has done for us and provide medical and information training for these people. It costs about $10,000 to train 50 people for a two to three-week course and $5,000 to support them with supplies and equipment. And in places where there are roads, we need trucks and motorcycles for transportation, $30,000 per four-wheel drive truck and $1,500 per motorcycle.
3) Support for escape. To help people escape and arrange all the various transport and communications costs between $300- $1,000 per escape. It costs $1,500 for a satellite phone and we need 20 phones.
Eubank went on to outline actions he’d like to see the international community help push for in Burma. Humanitarian assistance, political recognition of the ethnic groups and support of the movement for a democratic and federal government between ethnic groups. Eubank also said he’d like to see “protection for people under attack from Burma military and police” in both cities and ethnic areas.
Safe areas where people targeted by the government can go to seek refuge. A no-fly zone over ethnic areas of Burma was also on his list.
First and foremost, however, Eubank asked for “prayers, love and support.”
If you’d like to help Eubank and Free Burma Rangers in their quest to help persecuted peoples in Burma, visit their website.
For more background on the current situation, see this CBN interview with Eubank back in September 2020.