After Myanmar's military seized power in February last year, Hein Tay Za quit his job as an accountant in a cosmetics company and joined the frontline of peaceful protests, organising water and food supplies.
The 22-year-old lobbed his first smoke bomb at security forces from the barricades on a Yangon street after they opened fire on demonstrators. It was only when protesting became impossible that Hein Tay Za fled to “liberated territory” in the jungle uplands of Myanmar’s Karen state.
There his transformation from office worker to “People’s Defence Force” fighter was completed after undergoing weapons and explosives training by ethnic armed rebels.
But Hein Tay Za has now joined thousands of people – displaced Karen villagers as well as activists, politicians, celebrities and PDF guerrillas – who have fled across the border into Thailand since the junta began air strikes in the state.
“I had just my uniform and one gun,” recalled Hein Tay Za, a pseudonym, explaining why he fled to Thailand. These were of little use against the regime’s helicopters and fighter jets.
Since mid-December an offensive by Myanmar’s military in Karen and Kayah state to the north has displaced more than 100,000 people, about 10,000 of whom have escaped to Thailand.
In Kayah state air strikes last week reportedly killed three civilians, including a seven-year-old girl in Hpruso, a township where more than 30 people were killed and their bodies burnt by troops on Christmas Eve.
Post-coup conflict
The violence and displacement in eastern Myanmar highlights the extent to which the country's post-coup conflict is widening and intensifying. On both banks of the Moei river that separates Myanmar and Thailand, displaced people who fled the air strikes, mostly women and children, are sleeping rough under plastic sheets or in shelters used by cattle traders.
In an area near the river south of the Thai district capital Mae Sot, Thai soldiers stand watch over an encampment thought to house between 1,000 and 2,000 people, which foreign aid workers and journalists are not allowed to enter.
"It's okay for a few days, but these are shelters for cows and not for humans," said Sally Thompson, executive director of the Border Consortium, a non-governmental organisation. "These people need to be moved away from the border to an area where they can be provided [with] protection and adequate services."
Regime helicopters can be seen in operation from the Thai side, and in some cases stray bullets and shells from the fighting have landed across the river.
While local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) run by the Burmese diaspora have been allowed to send meals to the refugees, “we are not allowed to send rations – dry food or noodles – because the Thai authorities are worried it will become a permanent camp”, said Thet Swe Win, an activist who fled last year from Yangon.
Junta forces began an offensive against anti-regime rebels in eastern and western Myanmar after the monsoon to wipe out PDF forces who had declared loyalty to the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), formed by supporters of jailed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and “war” on the regime.
Parts of Karen state became a target after the Karen National Union (KNU) allied itself with the NUG and provided refuge and combat training to ethnic Burmese fleeing Yangon and other cities.
After an intense battle between PDF forces and regime troops last month, the military launched air strikes around Lay Kay Kaw, in an area controlled by the KNU’s civilian arm where many anti-regime people from Yangon were sheltering.
Border area
According to the UN, more than 74,000 people are internally displaced in Karen state and more than 91,000 in Kayah. The Thai government and international NGOs believe that up to 10,000 people have fled to Thailand since mid-December.
However, aid officials told the Financial Times that the true number was difficult to assess because they could not get access to the border area. While some who fled Myanmar over the past month have returned, others have used people smugglers to cross from Karen to Mae Sot, and blended into the border town’s large Burmese population.
In Kayah local media have estimated that as many as 150,000 people – or more than half of the state’s population – are now on the move.
“The number of refugees is increasing day by day, but they are spreading out,” said Phoe Thin Gyan, an aid worker who has been in Thailand since 1995, and whose humanitarian group has provided meals and other emergency assistance to new arrivals. “They are not safe living along the Thai border any more.”
Thailand’s foreign ministry said that most of the people sheltering in the country had voluntarily returned to their places of origin. Those that remained – a little more than 1,000, including women, children and the elderly – were being provided with medical care and other necessities.
“Thailand will continue to uphold its long-held humanitarian tradition in assisting those in need,” the ministry said.
Hein Tay Za, the rebel fighter who fled to Thailand last month, plans to return to Myanmar as soon as possible. “My main goal is to fight back against them,” he said. “Staying here is just a waste of time.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022
