Rockford Tabernacle ministers to Burmese tribe
The Rockford, Ill., Tabernacle Corps opened in 2003 to minister exclusively to the fast-growing Laotian congregation of the Rockford Temple Corps, which had begun ministering to newly arrived Laotians a decade earlier. The Tabernacle Corps followed suit and reached out to newly arrived Burmese, primarily members of the persecuted Karen tribe.
The Karen tribe is indigenous to the Southeast Asia region now occupied by Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). The Burmese Karen have suffered persecution and oppression at the hands of successive government regimes for decades. Forced labor, resettlements, incarceration, denial of political representation and citizenship status, among other human rights violations, have led thousands of Karen to move as refugees into Thailand and other countries.
Burma's Buddhist political and military forces (which include some Buddhist Karen) have been used to destroy churches, mountain-top crosses and other Christian symbols in Karen hill villages. Christian Karens have been forced to build Buddhist pagodas in place of their churches, and children have been taken from families and placed in Buddhist monasteries to serve as novice monks. Many other ethnic groups, including Muslims, suffer enormous persecution in a land where Buddhist supremacy is enforced through harsh methods.
In 2008 the charismatic leader of the Christian Karen, Pado Mahn Shar, was assassinated. Organizations like Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and others are demanding action from the United Nations Security Council against Burma for crimes against humanity.
The Karen tribe is most commonly known to the Western world for its "long-necked" women (actually members of a Karen sub-group called the Padaung). These women wear tiers of brass rings to seemingly elongate their necks. In fact, the rings' weight pushes the collar bone and upper ribs down to such an extent that the collar bone appears to be part of the neck.
The origin of this custom is cloudy; the rings may have prevented fatal tiger bites, made the women less attractive to slave traders or made them more attractive to potential husbands with displays of wealth. Ironically, adultery was punished by removing the rings, leaving the woman to spend the rest of her life supine due to severely weakened neck muscles.
Whatever the custom's origin, the most common reason why neck rings are worn today is tourism, particularly in Thailand. Many tourists now boycott hill-village tours that exploit the Padaung, likening the experience to visiting a human zoo.
The Karen people are masters at elephant training and the making and playing of musical instruments. Karen women commonly have hugely stretched ear-lobe holes. Girls start with small ear-lobe plugs that are replaced over the years by successively larger ones. It's not unusual to see older women with plate-sized plugs!
Young Karen women wear white to indicate their single status. When a union is approved, they weave a colorful wedding dress. Marriage is considered such an important part of a woman's life that, if she dies before marriage, she's buried or cremated in a wedding dress.
Karen folk history speaks of them as orphans who lost their writing system after God handed it down to them but who would have it returned one day by visitors from a far-away land. When Christian missionaries came, many Karen thought the historical promise had been fulfilled.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica