At the recent Sharing Hope business breakfast, Rev Tim Costello AO and Sharing Hope co-founder Kathy Thompson of Croydon Hills Baptist Church spoke about the struggles faced by the Karen people.
Sharing Hope has partnered with camps of internally displaced people along the Thai-Myanmar border for the past 14 years. It is currently fundraising $35,000 for projects in the camp at Ee Htu Hta and village of Ta Oo Hta where there is no electricity or running water.
Rev Costello said the most fundamental aspect of humanity was to empathise with others, imagining what it would be like if it were our own families being attacked. “We are all invited to one table, we are all made in God’s image. Sharing Hope is a Christian mission at its best.”
He challenged people to work alongside the Karen to give them “the rights that we would want for our own children”. He said the poorest Australian was richer than the richest Karen refugee, and he commended Sharing Hope for its work in supporting all three stages of aid development: to keep children alive until the age of 5, to give them an education, and to help them find ways to make a living.
Kathy, who has visited the border camps regularly over the past 14 years, said the devastation she saw during her visit in February was among the worst she has witnessed.
“There is such a fear and despair amongst them that I’ve never heard before elsewhere. Things are really tough. Where is their hope? We saw some of them carrying on with their school day while hearing bombs going off in the surrounding areas. Can you imagine that happening in Australia, during exams?”
At times, she could see old Karen villages across the river, burned and desolate – their homeland of 1500 years, within sight but far from livable. Each time residents had tried to rebuild housing or replant life-saving crops, they would be destroyed by the military.
Kathy said there were between 750,000 and 1 million internally displaced people living along the Thai-Myanmar border.
Visit sharinghope.org.au for more information.
