The author is a Kayah journalist who is receiving support from The Kite Tales to write these diaries.
Refugee camp on the Thai-Karenni border. July 12, 2023. Midnight.
“I told my husband, ‘if you sleep, sleep carefully, and keep your ears open. If the bomber plane comes, I will take the younger child. You take the older one. Don’t bring anything else. Let’s just grab the kids and run’.”
Mary is a former primary school teacher and an old friend of mine from Loikaw in Kayah state. We have stumbled across each other again far from home in a refugee camp on the Myanmar border with Thailand. She has been running for months with her husband and two children, but she has still not found safety.
“Before we moved there, we thought it would be more secure than the old camp,” she says in a trembling voice.
“I want my children to go to school so I was hoping they’d be able to study. But when we got here, we realised it’s not safe here either.”
I know a little of how she feels.
After the 2021 military coup, I heard that the junta had arrested and imprisoned a journalist friend in another state. After that I went into hiding, I never stayed more than one day and one night in the same place. On May 21, more than three months after the coup, clashes started between the junta and local forces in an area close to my parents’ house. That day, we all became refugees.
Now, I’m living somewhere on the border and despite difficulties and still working to inform people about the daily happenings in Karenni. Staying in a refugee camp while trying to be a reporter is one of the big challenges I’m facing. And repeatedly writing such bad news can take a mental toll.
I arrived at this camp to report and also to do some volunteering, not imagining that I would run into a friend. But seeing the difficulties Mary and her family are facing, I have no words to console her. All I can do is listen.
Mary is 30 and her two children are three and 7. After the coup, she joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), where government workers refused to turn up at work as a way to show their refusal to acknowledge the military’s authority and to make it impossible for the junta to run the country.
At first the family fled Loikaw in May 2021 due to intense fighting between regime soldiers and revolutionary forces. They went to a refugee camp not far from Loikaw – thinking maybe they could return to the land that her husband farmed – but the military bombed those camps. Hospitals and schools were damaged, she tells me. Although there were no casualties they decided to move on, arriving at another refugee camp along the border in the first week of April. Mary thought they would be safer from aerial bombardments. But she soon realised that the new refuge was as dangerous as the old one.
One night in July, Mary's family was woken by the sound of an explosion. They had no time to run or hide. By the time Mary had her child in her arms, the night was silent again.
They realised that the planes had targeted a secondary school not far from their home and suspected the planes might swing around for a second round of bombings. So Mary and her husband picked up their children and ran to a ditch.
Within minutes, the bombings began again, hitting the same school. The building, uninhabited at the time, was smashed to pieces. That night, the refugee camp was bombed five times. The clinic, the school, and a Catholic church were all destroyed. Mary and her family stayed in the bunker until 4 am.
The fear of that night still haunts Mary and many of the others who were living in the camp at the time. Some say they continue to suffer trauma, others packed up and fled to Thailand straight afterwards.
Mary and a few others were moved to another camp, but Mary is terrified she will be forced to return to the camp.
"If we go back, we will never feel safe. When will the plane return to bomb us? At night, we won't be able to sleep peacefully. I don't want to go back there and always listen to the sound of the plane.”
Artwork by JC who is receiving support from The Kite Tales to produce illustrations.
