Home sweet home | Highlighting the situation in Myanmar

For refugees in Malaysia, the stories from back home in myanmar are hard to hear. Today we hear from Henry* about his parents village, which was was attacked earlier this year. Written by WRS volunteer Ian Coverdale.

Home is not just the physical place we live in.  It is a psychological anchor that provides us with security, belonging and the setting where our relationships with family and friends occur.  Home is about our identity and about our connectedness within a community.  

With many of us looking forward to the festive season and welcoming family and friends into our homes I’d like to tell you about the situation that Henry’s parents find themselves in.  

Henry* is a volunteer at the Alliance of Chin Refugees, an organisation that WRS partners with.  Henry’s village in the Kanpetlet region in Chin State Myanmar was attacked by the Myanmar Government military forces (known as the Tatmadaw) in July this year.  

Henry has not lived in the village for 13 years.  As a 16 year old he fled to Malaysia to avoid being conscripted into the Tatmadaw.  I sense anger, guilt and frustration as Henry recounts how he was pressured to join the military, being threatened with a gun, potential arrest and threats against consequences his family if he did not join.  It was a very difficult decision he says, “but I had to leave, I could not join the Tatmadaw and oppress the people.”

However, Henry’s parents were living in the village in July this year when the Tatmadaw wiped it of the face of the earth with jets and heavy artillery fire.  

Fortunately, no one was killed because the word had gone out just prior to the attack that the Tatmadaw were preparing to attack, and everyone knew to immediately flee to the jungle.  

Four months later many people from the village are still living under makeshift shelters in the jungle.  They survive on rice that people from other villages give them and the crops that grow in their fields – fortunately the Tatmadaw did not destroy the farming land that the inhabitants of the village that was destroyed have worked for centuries.

The village of 44 houses no longer exists, with the 300 or so people who lived there now displaced.  A number of people have left the area, some paying to be smuggled into the neighbouring countries of India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia.  

Henry’s parents spent two months living in the jungle before a family they knew in a neighbouring village took them in.  

Henry tells me that his parents will rebuild as they are too tied to the land to leave it.  He says, “land and village is everything to them, they will never leave”.  Reconstruction will be a difficult path though and it will take good harvests for several years so that Henry’s parents can eke out the money to rebuild their house.  In the meantime, they will continue the long walk back to their fields to grow the crops that have sustained them and their forebears for generations.

I can see the despair on Henry’s face as he tells me he would like to help them out but cannot as he, his wife and baby daughter of 8 months barely survive on the money he earns in Malaysia.  Due to his illegal status in Malaysia Henry works for considerably less than do Malaysians. In addition, like other displaced people living in Malaysia he is extorted by police for money to avoid arrest and deportation. 

The Chin ethnic group, numbering around 700,000 globally face massive upheaval with only about 300,000 people live now living in Myanmar.  The majority of Chin have been displaced with most of them living precarious lives in surrounding countries while a relatively small number have been resettled as refugees to western countries.  

Ethnic minorities in Burma, including the Chin have been fighting the central Myanmar (previously Burmese) government for 75 years.  The military junta that governs Myanmar has aggressively been stamping out opposition to it since the coup against the National Unity Government in February 2021.  Like Henry’s village, villages and towns across Chin State have been progressively wiped out because the Chin people and their militia groups continue to seek the return of the National Unity Government, recognition of their ethnic rights and a level of self determination.

*Henry is a pseudonym that has been used to protect the identity of the people involved.  The name of the Henry’s village has also not been used in the article for the same reason.

Further reading:

If you would like to know more about the current security situation in Myanmar a couple of recent reports outline what is occurring:

Here are some news articles that also provide information about the security situation in Myanmar:





Westgate Refugee Support