More than 200 Karen villagers have reportedly been made homeless since Sunday due to military shelling
Credit: David Eubank/Free Burma Rangers
Her head in her hands, an exhausted woman crouches on the muddy forest floor. At her feet, a barefooted infant stares into the distance with a furrowed brow, clutching the remains of a cheap snack. Another child stands in pink cartoon pyjamas – indicating a sudden flight from home.
The forlorn trio, photographed on Monday deep in the jungle of Myanmar’s southern Kayin state, were among 212 villagers from the Karen ethnic minority who were reportedly forced to flee fresh shelling by the national army that began to hit their homes on Valentine’s Day.
Two weeks into the military coup that overturned the Southeast Asian nation’s elected government on February 1, fears that the political turmoil could be used to mask a more intense crackdown on Myanmar’s already oppressed ethnic minorities are already being realised.
“There are now over 5,300 Karen people displaced in northern Karen (Kayin) state as the Burma army advances. The army is trying to crush all dissent in the cities and control all in the mountains where we are,” said Dave Eubank, leader of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a relief group operating on the frontlines of the country’s decades-long ethnic conflicts.
Old people and children have been left living in the open in Kayin state
Credit: David Eubank/Free Burma Rangers
From an undisclosed location in the mountainous jungles of Kayin state, where he and his team are delivering aid packages to mainly women and children hiding in terror of the army, Mr Eubank has also been drawing attention to their forgotten plight with the help of a satellite phone.
“The Burma army is shelling all the way through December and January before the coup, but the shelling and fighting has increased since the coup and the Burma army have sent more troops up. They have now attacked deeper into the village areas,” he told the Telegraph in a voice message.
“There is an increasing number of internally displaced people, especially up in western Karen state up in the hills as the Burma army pushes more troops in and attacks from the roads towards the villages, driving people further into the jungle,” he said.
“By God’s grace and people’s help we are able to get rice to all of them. That’s a lot of carrying though because most of it is done on our backs…The Burma army shows no sign of slowing down here.”
Photos and videos transmitted by Mr Eubank highlight the desperate conditions faced by civilians hunkering down with their elderly relatives and babies in flimsy shelters in the open forest, surrounded by wicker baskets filled with salvaged belongings.
Mothers and babies have had to flee their homes due to military attacks
Credit: David Eubank/Free Burma Rangers
“The Burmese military shooted [sic] artillery around our village so we had to flee right now…We are already hiding since Jan 11,” one young man tells the camera.
Another chilling video from late January of FBR workers taking cover in the shrubbery from heavy crossfire between Karen soldiers and the Myanmar military, bullets ricocheting above their heads, hammers home the constant dangers faced by the local population.
In the urban centres of the Bamar Buddhist majority, Myanmar’s youngest generation has not yet known the brutality of the junta firsthand, but the military’s oppressive violence has never been far from the doors of the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.
Since independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar has been riven by a complex web of internal conflicts that have seen the rise of multiple armed insurgencies rebelling against central rule and fighting for greater self-determination.
The reversing of the country’s democratic transition in this month’s coup, in an attempt to annul the November election victory of the National League for Democracy, has also further endangered an already limping peace process.
The NLD party of detained civilian ruler Aung San Suu Kyi has named the peace process a top priority since it first came to power in 2015. In her New Year’s address in January, Ms Suu Kyi stressed the next five years would be dedicated to ending delays to conflict negotiations.
Children sit in temporary shelter in a jungle hideout
Credit: David Eubank/Free Burma Rangers
With the future of peace talks now hanging in the balance, members of the country’s Karen, Kachin, Chin and Rohingya minorities have joined the nation in opposing the coup, staging their own rallies in the country’s peripheral states.
But for many, their focus is less on the short-term restoration of the civilian government and more on far-reaching reforms to the 2008 constitution that grants the balance of power to military rulers, in favour of a federal system.
After a meeting with Karen and Karenni leaders on Monday, Mr Eubank said they were mobilising to both support the protest movement and stop military attacks on their people.
“They are trying to get a united front so that not just the military is removed but a federal and representative government with ethnic rights and a new constitution comes out of this,” he said.
In Yangon, Erik Thant, a 23-year-old student protester from eastern Shan State, said that ethnic minorities had overcome long-held grudges against the Bamar majority to oppose the military regime.
“For this coup, everyone joined the fight against the military, united against the coup,” he said.
Ethnic groups had hoped Ms Suu Kyi’s government would bring about equal rights and autonomy, according Benedict Rogers, a human rights activist and author of three books on Burma.
Kachin families are living in the open as their village homes come under military bombardment
Credit: David Eubank/Free Burma Rangers
Minority citizens were "disappointed" by Ms Suu Syi, but "still prefer democracy over military dictatorship", he explained.
“Without doubt the coup only means more bad news for Burma’s ethnic minorities. We have already seen an escalation in military offensives in ethnic areas in recent months, including in ceasefire areas, and with the junta being in power again that is only likely to increase.
“For decades the military has been associated with a Burman ethno-religious nationalist agenda that has led to severe persecution of ethnic and religious minorities," Mr Rogers added.
Minorities have been subject to violations including rape, shelling, shooting and trumped-up charges by the military for years, John Quinley, a senior human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, confirmed.
“More now than ever there is a need for local and international human rights monitors and journalists to have unfettered access to cover the unfolding situation in the country including in ethnic areas,” he said.
In a message to supporters on February 7, Mr Eubank said the Karen people hoped the democratic uprising against the military would bring about profound change and a national revelation of the “evil” situation they already face.
“Their own lives haven’t changed: they were attacked before the coup and they are being attacked now after the coup,” he said.
“Holding their babies in hiding places under the trees, they told me, “We don’t need you to give us food and medicine and shelter, just stop the Burma Army from attacking our villages.
"We are not attacking them in their cities, why are they attacking us? If you stop them, we can take care of ourselves.”
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