‘I have nowhere to run’: Children caught in the crossfire in Myanmar

Singapore: Angel had never heard the sound of a gunshot before but that all changed late last year when fighting began in her town in Myanmar’s eastern Kayah state.

The 16-year-old was visiting her grandmother when the shooting began and was terrified that the house would be struck.

Angel, not her real name, had her town taken over by conflict.Credit:Phyo Phyo Nay Win/Save the Children

“I was so shocked and frightened … no idea what to do,” recalled Angel, whose name has been changed for safety reasons.

“My neighbour fled to the monastery. I couldn’t go at that time and leave my grandmother. All the neighbours were fleeing, no one was left inside the home or on the road. I heard the sound of continuous bomb blasting and gunshots.”

Myanmar remains in a state of chaos nearly a year since its military seized power in a coup and she lives in fear of security forces returning.

“I am afraid the heavy artillery will shell my house. We don’t have a bomb shelter. If the clash happens again I have nowhere to run away,” she said.

Children playing at an IDP camp in Kayah state.Credit:Phyo Phyo Nay Win/Save the Children

“What if the police and soldiers come in all of a sudden? Will they check my house as I have read on the news? I am afraid of what might happen if they suddenly break into my house.”

The teenager’s testimony was recorded in December by Save the Children, which in a new report says that at least 150,000 children in Myanmar have been forced to flee their homes, many to internal displacement camps or to the jungle, as a result of the violence that has engulfed the country since the coup and left nearly 1500 people dead.

Children have been in the line of fire since soon after the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, detained Myanmar’s elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her Australian economic advisor Sean Turnell and other political opponents and reclaimed control of the troubled south-east Asian nation.

Dozens were killed in the initial months when junta troops began a brutal crackdown on the resistance movement, firing on pro-democracy demonstrators in major cities and making the first of more than 11,000 arrests, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.

Shadows of children playing together in a displacement camp in Myanmar’s Shan state.Credit:Save the Children

Children have died in bombings as recently as last week, according to local media reports, and in one of the most horrific developments since the February 1, 2021 coup, four children, one as young as 5, were among 35 people whose charred bodies were found after they were massacred near the town of Hpruso in eastern Kayah state on Christmas Eve.

Save the Children had two staff members – both new fathers travelling home for the holidays – killed in that attack, which is blamed squarely on the military.

“Yet again, we are seeing children bear the brunt of conflict,” Save the Children chief executive Inger Ashing said. “Children and their families are fleeing because they have no choice and we are seeing them forced to hide out in jungles and forests and living in terrible conditions.”

According to figures from the United Nations refugee agency, an estimated 406,000 people have been displaced within Myanmar since the military took over, with 32,000 crossing the border to neighbouring countries such as Thailand and India to escape the bloodshed.

Four children were among the 35 people killed in an attack on Christmas Eve in Kayah state that was blamed on the military.Credit:Karenni Nationalities Defense Force

International efforts to bring an end to the crisis have failed, so now Cambodia strongman Hun Sen has, as this year’s ASEAN chairman, controversially taken up the issue himself.

Hun Sen flew to Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, this month to meet with junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and in a video call on Wednesday appealed to him to permit a visit by ASEAN’s special envoy and support humanitarian aid access.

However, there has been unease among neighbours in south-east Asia, particularly Malaysia, about Hun Sen’s controversial trip to Myanmar and continuing dialogue with its military leader. In an historic move, regional leaders last October excluded Min Aung Hlaing from an ASEAN summit, and Malaysia Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob told Hun Sen this week that no political representatives from Myanmar would be welcome again until there was progress in adopting the terms of a five-point consensus agreed by regional leaders last April.

In the meantime, Angel can only wait and hope. With schools closed since August 2020 due to the pandemic and then the coup, she said her “whole life is in chaos right now”.

“I planned to be at university … join external courses and work right after that. Now I haven’t even finished high school,” she said.

“I wish for my town to be an everyday place again, a crowded place that it used to be. Now there’s no one in the street. It is worse than when the gunshot happened. I don’t want that anymore.”

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