They have a month to “relocate” and find a house, the reception centers are prohibited from receiving them. According to the UN, there are more than a million. Those who have taken part in the civil disobedience movement cannot be hired, under penalty of arrest. sources: “Depression, addictions and traumas are on the rise among the young and very young”.
Yangon () – The latest report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that there are more than a million displaced people in Myanmar. But the military regime that took power with a coup and started a civil conflict in February 2021, considers that the concept of “internally displaced persons” should no longer exist. The Burmese military has given the population – particularly those who took refuge in Sagaing, a central region with a Burmese majority – a month to find relocation. In practical terms, it means finding a house and a job and getting on with your life, as if the country were not engulfed in a brutal conflict that is now spreading everywhere, even in states that until a few months ago had been spared, such as Rakhine .
But it also means that those who offered hospitality to refugees can no longer do so. Army inspections have multiplied: soldiers appear even in the middle of the night, pointing their rifles at civilians, including children, to check that the number of people in a house corresponds to that on the lists of residents, sources say.
The United Nations agencies have been prohibited from bringing aid: the burden of assisting the population falls on the small local realities, but they find it increasingly difficult to work. It is forbidden to transport food, medicine, mattresses, tin roofs: anything that suggests humanitarian aid. Under penalty of immediate arrest.
“We can’t order painkillers, not even paracetamol, from suppliers because soldiers open packages at checkpoints and confiscate the drugs,” said a pharmacist. Those who escaped from the army and took refuge in the woods (churches and monasteries are no longer safe) are at risk of dying from snake bites because there are no antidotes. At least four people have been killed in this way in Sagaing since June.
Now the dry season begins and without rain it is easier to fight, because visibility improves and there is no mud on the roads: the movement of men and weapons is more agile, so the conflict will intensify in the coming months. “It already happened last year and it will happen again, without a doubt,” the sources explain.
The shadow government of national unity, made up of former deputies in exile, declared a few days ago that the People’s Defense Forces (the anti-coup troops that fight the junta together with the ethnic militias of the different states) will launch the last offensive and within a year the war will be over. But among civilians (especially those who are fighting) no one believes in it.
The two categories of people most affected by the conflict are young people and those who had participated in the civil disobedience movement immediately after the coup. Among the former, three groups can be distinguished: those who have enlisted in the militias, those who are trying to leave the country and “those who manage”. School desertion is very high, according to some estimates it could be 80%. “Surely 60% of students have not returned to study,” they tell us. Drug use has increased because “there is nothing to do. There are some who go to fight because they believe in democratic ideals, but many do it just to kill someone. Depression, addictions and traumas are more and more widespread”.
The young and the very young are the generation that would least have expected a return to a military regime after a decade of democratic opening. It is the generation that immediately after the coup took to the streets to protest peacefully. On the other hand, those who had already lived through the dictatorship, after the first shot, understood that things would quickly get worse and the army would try to take control of the country. But General Min Aung Hlaing, self-proclaimed prime minister, “is the worst of all the dictators that Myanmar has had.” Because of the rhetoric he uses and the violence he has unleashed.
Those who had participated in the civil disobedience movement now find themselves with nothing: “the majority are registered, and nobody can hire them, under penalty of arrest for the employer. It is not evil, but fear of possible reprisals.”
The only hope is that the military may find it difficult to keep open all the fronts it is fighting on, but “while China does not want to get involved in this conflict because it has realized that it has nothing to gain” – our sources- Russia continues to support the Burmese regime. “The resistance fights tooth and nail. In some areas it is very strong, but the various groups are also divided among themselves.” Even if the conflict ends, many wonder if the ethnic militias – who have been fighting the state since independence in 1948 – will be able to come to terms and build a new Myanmar. It could be years before they know.
