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Khine Thu fled her home in the Sagaing region of northwestern Myanmar for the first time in June and ran into the jungle when soldiers stormed into her village. She doesn’t know how many times she has escaped since then, but thinks it might be about 15 times now.
“Whenever we hear soldiers coming, we run,” she said. “We fled into the forest, and we will return to the village after the soldiers leave.”
With the increase in armed resistance to the military coup on February 1, the military rulers violently suppressed the entire village, reflecting “Four Cuts” It has honed its strategy for more than 60 years in the country’s turbulent border areas.
Since April, the Sagaing area has been a stronghold of the resistance movement and a hot spot for fighting the epidemic. Deadly military invasion.
According to a report submitted by the Myanmar National Unity Government (NUG) to the UN Human Rights Council on September 19, a total of 109 people have been killed in the area since July.
73 of the victims were from the towns of Depayin and Kani. Human rights organizations and local media documented the massacre in July. The victims, including soldiers and civilians, were all men, but because the security forces maintained a presence in the villages in the area, women were living in the aftermath of the conflict every day. This month, the military blocked the Internet in 10 towns and villages in the Sagaing region, including Kani, raising concerns that the military might intensify attacks.
The violence started on June 14 in the Satpyarkyin village of Khine Thu in the town of Depayin. The soldiers shot dead the day after the two daughters of a military-appointed administrator were found dead in a nearby village. one person.
The soldiers returned on July 2; according to NUG reports, the ensuing clashes resulted in the deaths of at least 32 locals in indiscriminate shelling and small arms shooting, and the media agency Myanmar now reports that 10,000 from 11 villages People fled their homes.
Depayin’s People’s Defense Force (PDF) stated on its Facebook page that 26 of its members were killed in the incident. The army fired heavy weapons at the fleeing villagers, and the state-run Myanmar Global Shin Kong newspaper reported that “armed terrorists” had Ambush the security forces, killing one soldier and wounding 6 others, then retreat after the security forces retaliated.
Khine Thu, like other women interviewed by Al Jazeera, asked to use a pseudonym for fear of retaliation. She said that the soldiers had come in and out, and she and other villagers were ready to escape at any time. Even though the soldiers were gone, the village was still quiet, and the shops and markets were closed.
She said that the villagers hide in the forest for several days or weeks at a time, and it is difficult to meet their basic needs.
“We don’t have access to drinking water in some places,” she explained. “Some days, we only eat one meal, sometimes only salted rice or fish sauce. I’m really upset, and sometimes I don’t even want to live anymore.”
Another local resident, Aye Chan, said that locals do not have access to medicines and can only rely on plants and herbs to treat diseases.
Due to the danger, she and Khine Thu stopped their work as farm labourers.
“We can’t live in peace. We can’t work. We just rely on donations from others to run around seeking safety [soldiers] bring it on. Ai Can said. “The presence of soldiers in our village has an impact on our body and mind. We can’t eat well and sleep well. “
Women at risk
The military used force and extensive arrests to suppress mass protests and civil disobedience movements that began days after seizing power from the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to the Political Prisoners Aid Association (Myanmar) or AAPP, a rights organization that has been tracking military abuses, security forces have killed more than 1,100 people and arrested more than 8,200 people since then.
Facing the narrow space of rebelling against military rule through peaceful means, Many people took up armsSome have joined existing ethnic armed groups, while others have signed contracts with local armed resistance organizations, which have sprung up dozens of organizations across the country in recent months, including most in Depain and Kani. People come from areas of the Burmese minority.
[Illustration: JC]NUG, which is operating in exile, also announced the formation of a national level People’s Defence Force (PDF), whose scale and activities remain largely unknown. On September 7, NUG announced the launch of “People’s Defense War,” called on all citizens across the country to “resist” military generals.
In many cases, local armed resistance organizations with little equipment but only single shotguns and limited training or combat experience also call themselves PDFs, but usually have nothing to do with NUG. They face a team that has accumulated at least 2.4 billion. Army of dollars. Weapons of the past 10 years.
They relied on asymmetric tactics, including ambushes on army convoys and police stations, and claimed to have killed hundreds of soldiers, but in response, the army attacked their communities indiscriminately, just like in ethnic minorities since 2017. The areas where armed groups exist. The 1960s.
The military has always labelled ethnic armed organizations as “insurgents” or “terrorists” and attacked ethnic regions under the guise of national security. There are similar claims now.
In a statement issued on August 28, the military described PDF and NUG and the committee that appointed it as “terrorist organizations” and stated that those who encourage people to participate in “terrorist acts” sheltered members of these organizations or gave them to They will also be considered “terrorists” if they provide financial support.
In 2019, a fact-finding mission appointed by the United Nations described the military’s use of sexual violence, including rape, and gender-based violence to “intimidate and punish ethnic minorities,” and reported that the military’s sexual violence was “deliberate and elaborate”. Planned strategies to intimidate, intimidate, and punish civilians.”
According to the Chin human rights organization, in May, a 15-year-old girl in the Sagaing area was raped and killed by soldiers. In July, Radio Free Asia reported that a woman in Kachin State was raped and stabbed to death nearby. There is a military outpost on the way to her farm, and the military is investigating the case.
On September 26, local media, Myanmar Democracy Voice and Khit Thit Media reported that four women in Kani township were raped between June and September, but the report of the attack was postponed due to social stigma. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify this information.
[Illustration: JC]Thandar Aye, a women’s rights activist working in the Sagaing area and neighboring Chin State, told Al Jazeera that soldiers usually verbally harass women and she fears that due to social stigma and fear of retaliation, other cases of physical or sexual assault may not be reported from the military.
She added that women in the area avoided leaving their homes even during the day, because they were worried that soldiers might sexually assault them. “Women cannot go out freely,” she said. “Most women just stay at home and face food shortages.”
‘They took everything’
Phyoe, a grocery store owner from Chyaung Ma Village, told Al Jazeera that for this reason, she went out as little as possible.
She said: “I heard that women have been raped in some other villages and regions, so I am really worried that this will happen to me.”
Since April, at least 15,000 civilians have been displaced by intense conflict in the town of Kani, 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of De Pain.
“when [soldiers] Come, let’s close everything and run it again. Only the elderly and women with children are left in the village, and they cannot run. “Like Khine Thu, she can’t remember the number of times she and her family fled.
According to the NUG report, in July, 43 corpses were found in four locations in Kani town; AAPP and the media recorded signs of torture on most of the corpses. The military did not issue any public statements, nor did it respond to media inquiries about the death.
“[Soldiers] Blaming ordinary locals for participating in the PDF, they killed many people who took refuge in the forest,” Phyoe said. “We are not safe at home, and we are not safe in the forest… Since the soldiers came to our village, we have been insomnia. “
The soldiers occupied Fior’s house twice; they also stole valuables from her house and emptied the shelves of her grocery store.
She said that after dark, the streets of Chyaung Ma were empty. When soldiers passed by, the locals who remained in the village were afraid to walk around their homes because they were afraid of being shot.
Unable to earn income or buy goods, her family now depends on food donations from relatives and other villagers.
“[Soldiers’] The existence and all the cruel things in our village [they did] It really affects our lives and survival,” she said.
Thuzar also runs a small shop and lives in the village of Na Myar, which is 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Satpyarkyin in the town of Depayin. She has been in and out of the forest since soldiers fired artillery and attacked her village on August 9.
“Everyone in the village prepared something in case the soldiers came, but when they did come, we ran away in a hurry, so we didn’t bring much,” she said.
Only trees and some small tarps could shelter from the rain, and they watched the cannon attack a group of goats nearby.
“The image of a dead goat is so weird,” Tuzzar said. “We feel frustrated and mentally hurt because we see a lot of things we shouldn’t see.”
[Illustration: JC]When the soldiers left on August 9, the villagers returned home to find their property was damaged and looted. “[Soldiers] Take away all the food in our refrigerator, ransack our closet,” she said. “We locked the door of a room, they destroyed the door… they took everything. They didn’t even leave 2,000 kyats (US$1.20) in my daughter’s schoolbag. “
She said the soldiers also filled her friend’s refrigerator with sand. In some houses where the elderly were left, “a soldier talked to them at the front door, while other soldiers entered the house through the back door and took them away. They thought What do you want.”
In late August, soldiers occupied the village for about 10 days. When Thuzar returned home, she found her chicken was missing, and more than 30 houses were searched. At a grocery store at the entrance of the village, locals found piles of sacks filled with paraffin oil. “if [soldiers] If you light them up, our entire village will be reduced to ashes,” she said.
Soon after the coup, Tuzal and her husband closed their shop and switched to rice cultivation.
Now she is worried that they will not be able to finish planting before the end of the rainy season in October.
“When things calmed down a little bit, we went back for a few days and everyone scrambled to plant it,” she said.
When Al Jazeera spoke to her at the end of August, she was preparing to flee again because she heard that military trucks were approaching. “We always feel that they are here to arrest or kill us,” she said. “I will feel safe only when we achieve democracy.”
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