Across Three Easters in the Burma Conflict – War Doesn’t Take a Holiday

Antonio Graceffo

On Easter weekend 2026, there were no major massacres in Burma, as in previous years. However, there were many airstrikes and mortar attacks in different areas. Burma jets carried out an airstrike and destroyed a monastery in K6, Dooplaya District, Karen State. The Burma Army fired heavy mortars into the Demoso area of Karenni State. Mortars were also fired by the Burma Army in K5, Papun District, northern Karen State, wounding one person. A ground attack took place in Karen State, K3, but there are no details yet as to the casualty count. Additionally, there were multiple airstrikes and mortar attacks the day before and the day after Easter, affecting almost every district.

For all Christians, Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus, but Easter is the most important religious festival of the year because it is the day Christians remember the resurrection of Christ. For Catholics, Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter, marks the beginning of the Easter season. The fact that the Burma Army would launch attacks on these days is particularly abhorrent for the sizeable number of Christians in Burma.

This year, 2026, marks my third Easter since returning to Burma in 2023. Previously, I had reported in Shan State in 2007 and 2008, and briefly in 2004.

In 2024, I spent Ash Wednesday in a small church on the border in Mae Hong Son, where nearly 100 percent of the congregation were ethnic minorities from Burma. Mass was held in the Thai language, which very few of the minorities spoke, but there was no common language that included everyone, as many of the ethnic minorities do not speak Burmese, particularly those born in Thailand. The service was held on a Sunday because it was too difficult for Burmese migrants to attend on a Wednesday, as many were working as laborers in agricultural fields or construction sites.

Every time we attended church, we would congregate in the parking lot afterward and talk about the war, who had fled, why they had fled, how hard their life was now, and how terrifying the circumstances were that they had left behind. They spoke about their families being displaced, wounded, or killed in Burma. One parishioner, a hotel owner from Karenni State, showed me a video of his hotel, his life, and his dreams being blown up by the military.

That year, I spent Good Friday and Easter in an IDP camp in Karenni State. The church had been hit by an airstrike several months earlier. The school and college in the camp were both destroyed in that attack, and the parishioners were afraid to go inside the church building for Mass because they felt it was a target easily seen from the skies. But on Good Friday, they gathered their faith and courage, dusted out the church, cleared some wreckage, and held a Good Friday service.

For Catholics in a war zone, a particular problem is that they must have a priest in order to hold Mass. Baptists and other Protestants can hold worship services led by a pastor, elder, senior church member, or any person the believers feel is qualified to lead the service. But Catholic Mass can only be said by a priest. Without a priest, Catholics also cannot receive sacraments, which means they cannot go to confession or receive the Eucharist. This is particularly worrying in the context of a war, where one could die at any moment.

On that Good Friday, fortunately, there were two qualified catechists in the IDP camp who could lead a worship service, although Mass would have to wait until the visiting priest made his rounds every two or three months. On Easter Sunday, we held service again, and while it was sad that we could not have a full Mass, it was encouraging to see people strong enough in faith to risk airstrikes in order to worship and to keep the feast day holy.

After the Catholic service, the camp’s Baptist community invited me to attend their service. Once again, it was very encouraging to see nearly 200 people gathered together, irrespective of airstrikes, singing and smiling together. After both services, however, there was no communal meal or snack because there was no money to buy supplies.

Still, it had been a wonderful day, and I was feeling particularly hopeful as I walked back to the barracks. When I entered the Wi-Fi zone, however, my phone blew up with messages from David Eubank, head of Free Burma Rangers, who was on a mission in another part of Burma. It was a report from David Eubank saying that there had been an Easter massacre, that the junta had struck a pagoda where people were taking refuge, Buddhists, Christians, animists, everyone, all being sheltered by the pagoda.

He sent me photos, including images showing that the head monk had been killed, his body torn apart, with his torso in one place and his legs in another.

That was my first Easter in Burma. It was not just my Easter, it was the Easter of all the people in Burma. The holiest day of the year was used as an opportunity for the Burma Army to kill civilians.

In 2025, I was in Burma for Ash Wednesday receiving my ashes in an IDP camp. There had been a battle that Monday in Karenni State, and many soldiers were killed. My mission on that trip was to find a priest named Father Paul Than who had been targeted by the junta. They had been trying to kill him for some time.

My goal was to find him and try to convince him to get out of Burma. In the end, Khun Bedu of the KNDF was the hero of the story because he made Father Paul’s escape possible. I was just there to convince, encourage, and report.

Once Father Paul was collected by an armed convoy on his way to safety, I went with Khun Bedu, and later with a priest, over the next several days, attending funerals for soldiers killed that week. That is how my Lent, the 40 days before Easter, began, by going to funerals for soldiers, most of whom were about 19 years old. One of them was 42, which is somewhat older, but that meant he had children who no longer have a father.

This year, 2026, I spent Ash Wednesday in Burma again. In 2026, it was impossible to access the big cathedral in Demoso because the Burma Army controlled the road that linked the two sides of the city. So, once again, we received ashes in an IDP camp.

The house we had used in 2025 was no longer inhabitable because the front line had shifted, with the bombs coming closer and closer. During that first week of Lent, we responded to an airstrike on a clinic, an airstrike on a hospital, and one that destroyed a school. Miraculously, no one was killed in any of the three strikes, but we had to evacuate a hospital, and at least one of the patients died after being returned to his camp because he was no longer receiving the expert care he had at the hospital. Once again, he was about 19 or 20 years old, which seems to be the average age of the soldiers who are killed and those who lose their legs to landmines.

IDPs who had already been displaced multiple times were forced to move again, and the entire landscape of the war looked dramatically different and less hopeful than it had been in 2025.

IDPs were also flooding in from Pekon, with entire villages arriving in need of food, shelter, medical care, and school for their children. One of the former Pekon IDP camps was scheduled to move again because the bombs were getting too close. They had just planted their fields and would now be relocated to the forest, where they would have to begin again, clearing land and planting, and this would be their last move.

There is a severe scarcity of water. The camps generally have a few reservoir troughs, usually made of bamboo and plastic tarps, but they have to pay for a truck to come and fill them. Unfortunately, the camps generally have no money, so water is strictly rationed. After this next move, closer to the border, there will be no place left to go. If the Burma Army breaks through the resistance line or launches a major airstrike campaign, thousands of civilian IDPs could be killed.

After my mission ended in Karenni State, I went to Rome for Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter. There, I discovered there are roughly 96 Karenni religious nuns and priests studying and working in various convents and missions.

Karenni nuns hosted me for Easter Sunday lunch. They were eager to hear news of the war, as most had left before the coup. They told me how their families were displaced, and at least one said she had not heard from her family in months because they had no access to Starlink. They prayed daily for their families and for their country in Burma.

They are serving God, operating charities including schools, orphanages, hospitals, and elder care. They all said they were grateful to be in a life of service, but at the same time, they wished they could be in their country serving. But this is part of what being a Christian is and what makes the religious vocation unique. It is not about doing what makes us happy or doing the good deeds we want to do, but about doing the specific good deeds we are called to do.

While our Easter celebration in Rome was joyous, there was an underlying feeling of guilt that the people in Burma would not be experiencing as much joy.

All of the Burma news I had to share with the sisters was depressing. But then I received a message from David Eubank, reminding us to be hopeful. “Easter reminds us of the great gift that God gave us. And in the middle of all the suffering and betrayal between people and people and between us and God, it reminds me that the work of the Free Burma Rangers, first of all, is to point people to Jesus. All the humanitarian work and advocacy is an extension of the love that God gave us.”

And so the sisters, the Rangers, the resistance soldiers, the IDPs, and I all prayed that next year would be better. I feel there is always hope, and God has not forgotten Burma.