A ray of sunshine for Myanmar’s wounded rebels as civil war rages
Wounded revolutionary fighters are positioned next to each other in an old wooden house in Mae Sot, Thailand, in a Thai border town.
Many are amputees missing legs, hands, and arms. Some people suffer severe head injuries, while others have crippling spinal injuries. Some are blind, and others are unable to walk.
These young fighters have been wounded by landmines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and sniper fire, burned by the flames of bombs dropped by warplanes and scarred by shrapnel.
They have traveled to this border town from neighboring Myanmar, where they are receiving medical care for their injuries from an ongoing civil conflict that has become one of the longest and most violent ever.
However, Sunshine Care Centre, their home, does not have the chic, sterile atmosphere of a white-walled hospital with modern medical equipment and a team of highly trained surgeons.
Instead, the center’s estimated 140 war-wounded fighters are living in primitive conditions, largely squatting on wood and steel cots set up under a traditional Thai stilted house.
They are cared for by volunteers, who themselves have fled from Myanmar.
Most people are unable to flee their homes because they are afraid of violent reprisals from the Myanmar military, whose coup they have been opposing for four years.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government was removed on February 1, 2021, launching an unprecedented uprising against military rule in the country’s 54 million-strong population.
Generation Z, the group of young people born between 1997 and 2012, is said to have been fueled by the coup and the violent crackdown that followed.
This generation enlisted in ethnic armed organizations, the newly formed People’s Defence Forces (PDF), and engaged in support roles like taking care of wounded fighters in the jungles and highlands.
Ko Khant, 23, who was one of the participants in the conflict, lost sight of his left eye after his hand was blown off at the wrist by an unexploded RPG rocket fired by military forces.
According to Ko Khant, resistance fighters frequently pick up bombs and rockets that don’t detonate because their forces lack the necessary ammunition and weapons, despite the fact that one rocket detonated in this instance, causing serious injuries.
“When the RPG dropped from the]military] side, I , went , to , pick it up, and it just exploded”, he said. “Sometimes when the RPG drops they don’t explode. With gunpowder, I had a broken wrist and a broken eye.
Before the military takeover, Ko Khant was a chef in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, specialising in European cuisine. After joining pro-democracy street protests and experiencing the violent military crackdown, he fled to Karen State, bordering Thailand, to join PDF fighters.
He received some training and soon found himself on the front lines, where, in January 2022, he suffered injuries, becoming partially disabled.
Smuggled across the border and treated in Thai hospitals, Ko Khant then came to Sunshine Care Centre to recover, and now he helps run the centre’s day-to-day activities.
He declined, telling Al Jazeera that there were other amputees in greater need, and that he had been given a prosthetic hand while he was recovering.
“There are people who are in need, a lot more than me”, he said.
“It doesn’t feel like I have no hand”.
Source: Aljazeera
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