Blankfaced

Christmas Day is a strange day.

It’s every retailer’s dream come true, with sales in the Christmas period sometimes matching that of an entire year.  Ask most people and they’ll tell you: “It’s about family”.

However our Christmas days can also be described in negative terms – such as busy, hectic, stress.  It gets darker than that – Christmas is often the time when the pain of those that are missing is at its sharpest. A reminder of broken relationships, families, and all the good times that might have been.

So how does your Christmas day rank? 5 out of 10?  8? 2?

Here’s a Christmas story that is outrageous. Yet it’s happening. Now.

Saw Ko Nu crying for his son, April 2008

On Christmas Day 2007, a Burma Army patrol wandered into Saw Ko Nu’s rice fields. Ko Nu ran away. He’d already seen what the army could do. In 2002 he survived a massacre by hiding under the body of his dead grandmother. He lost his wife and three of his children during the incident.

This time Ko Nu had his 13-year-old son Wilbur and nephew Saw No Maw working the fields with him. He thought they were safe. After the army patrol moved on, he went looking for them.

He found their burned bodies in the rice field. They had not been shot but had been captured and tortured to death. Ankle tendons had been cut open, throats cut, bodies disemboweled and then set on fire.

This happens now.

In our enlightened progressive modern world.

Saw Ko Nu is a real man – carrying with him the overwhelming weight of his loss.

“Oh my son, my son, I tried my best for you. I planned many good things for you, but now you have no chance to enjoy them. Oh my son, my son. Oh God. Oh my son, my son, you go ahead and wait for me” – Ko Nu’s words upon revisiting the place of his son’s death.

Please read more about reality in Burma (Myanmar). Maybe we can even do something about it.

Thanks to CCB, Chiang Mai, Thailand.