Myanmar on brink as Junta burn rebel villages in bloody crackdown

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Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021 and halted Burma’s fragile transition towards democracy since then the junta has been using a scorched-earth strategy to punish civilians in ethnic minority areas suspected of supporting the various armed rebel groups that have sprung up in defiance of the coup. Human rights activists and ethnic minority groups have been documenting regime atrocities, with mounting evidence of widespread attacks on civilians, with townships like that of Thantlang in Chin State left in ruins.

Lai Lian, who was born and raised in Thantlang, has described to Express.co.uk how troops from the Burmese Army, also known as the Tatmadaw, dealt out brutal violence to the innocent residents of his hometown.

Myanmar’s forces have been blamed for repeated attacks on the predominately Christian and peaceful township which have resulted in hundreds of homes and churches being burnt down or destroyed by shelling.

Lai told Express.co.uk “The soldiers shot and killed a Baptist pastor and then cut off his finger to steal his wedding ring after he tried to help out parishioners whose homes had been set on fire by the shelling.

“The whole town has been deserted since the killings. The burning of houses and bombs have forced the people of Thantlang to flee across the border and into India’s Mizoram State, including my family.”

Lai no longer lives in Myanmar but spoke of his deep pain at losing his own home to the fires in October leaving his family members internally displaced and destitute.

He told Express.co.uk: “My own home was burned down on the 26th of October 2020, I feel all my childhood memories have been lost along with our belongings, all my forefathers’ traditional heirlooms which had been passed down from generation to generation, the traditional dresses, jewellery, pots and musical instruments.”

Besides the loss of cherished belongings and keepsakes, Lai explained that all of his family’s identification papers and title deeds were also lost, making the task of rebuilding their lives elsewhere that much harder.

Lai told Express.co.uk: “All my family-owned lands, property and investment documents were lost as well. There is nothing left for us.”

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The military coup on February 1 2021 saw Myanmar’s elected leaders arrested, including the prominent pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi.

What followed was widespread protests and civil disobedience as well as international condemnation.

Army generals reacted with a harsh crackdown, including the use of force against protestors and the imposition of martial law in several areas of the country.

Burma has been in a state of internal turmoil since with conflict between the military and ethnic groups that have formed armed resistance movements against the government’s oppression.

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In Chin state, many people have taken up arms with the various rebel factions some of whom have been involved in decades-long conflicts with the central government.

Elsewhere in Myanmar other minority groups have been mounting their own insurgencies such as the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Liberation Army.

An armed wing of the pro-democracy movement has also emerged from the clashes which followed the coup under the banner of the People’s Defence Force.

The amount of violence in the country has reached the level of civil war, with government violence extending beyond the rural battlefields into the cities, where activists are arrested and tortured and urban guerrillas retaliate with bombings and assassinations of targets linked to the military.

The military, after closed trials, have also executed activists accused of “terrorism.”

Lai, who did not share his full name for fear of retribution, now lives in the UK but longs to be able to return to Chin State and be with his relatives.

The electrical engineer thinks of his niece who he has never met in person and how her generation has suffered through not only the coronavirus pandemic but now the military coup and its aftermath.

“I have a very promising, smart niece, who was educated in high school all through the Covid pandemic but then the Coup started and her school remains closed today four years on,” Lai told Express.co.uk

“Her life has been totally destroyed she will never get back to the same again. There is no future left for her”.

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