As my internship passes its halfway mark, I feel like I finally have a grasp on the complicated history of Myanmar and its current state. In retrospect, it makes me sick to consider how little I knew previously. I simultaneously feel sick to think about what I have learned. In so many ways, Myanmar is suffering. Since 1962, shortly after British rule was abolished, the government of Myanmar has been held in a power struggle between its citizens and the military. In 2015, democracy won, and a civilian-led government was installed under Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership. This lasted 6 years before the military overthrew the government in a coup that changed everything overnight. The country has been locked in civil conflict since, and it has led to over 100,000 deaths. That’s over 55 people dead every day. The junta has inflicted more than 6,300 air and drone strike events over schools, hospitals, and homes. More than 5 million people have fled Myanmar due to its precarious state, many of them moving to bordering regions of nearby Thailand in districts such as Khao Lak.
What has impacted me the most during my stay here is hearing stories directly from the people I teach alongside at the Unified Learning Centre, all of whom are migrants from Myanmar. While I have heard so many terrible stories from Myanmar, I’ve also been told many beautiful memories from the country, as it has rich and diverse cultures and landscapes alike. I’ve decided not to spend this blog talking about how much I deeply cherish my lovely, lovely life here in Khao Lak, how I already mourn my departure, and spewing my perspective about a country I have never been to and have only experienced through the veil of a migrant community in Thailand. Instead, I wanted to share the perspectives and experiences of a few of the people I am grateful to know here. Thank you to Yun, Soe Min, Yuna, and Luke. I’ve tried to represent you all to the best of my abilities. Thanks for letting me sit with you, receive your stories, and share them.
Yun is my lovely and caring friend, who makes me a cup of coffee every morning and always asks me if I slept well. She starts my mornings on a positive swing and is a bright light throughout the rest of the day as well. We are also working together to perfect our cane ball craft, a Myanmar sport that involves a small ball traditionally hand-woven from rattan cane stalk. Players use anything but their hands to keep the ball in the air. We make fools of ourselves while our opponents – students no older than 12 years old – gracefully tip the ball over the net, looking completely unbothered, while completing the most acrobatic maneuvers.
Yun is originally from the Dawai region in Southern Myanmar. She describes it as “beautiful, green and a peaceful place surrounded by mountains, forests, rivers and natural landscapes.” It’s also coastal, so there are many special seafood dishes from the region like Moke Lat Thoke, a delicious fish soup. There is also an amazing traditional dance that originates in Dawai where “dancers balance water-filled clay pots on their heads […] In some cases, dancers balance 4 or even 5 pots from the largest to the smallest on their heads. It’s really impressive.” Just like every other region in Myanmar, Dawai is rich in its own unique culture. For Yun, she was also a teacher there. Life in Dawai was spent not only teaching but also running a restaurant alongside her parents, sister, and four brothers. As she puts it, “Life was going well, and I was happy to work and support my family.”
Then came the 2021 military coup. “Life changed very dramatically for many people in Myanmar, including my family,” Yun says. Her family resisted the new military regime courageously; Yun and her brother, also a fellow teacher, both joined the Civil Disobedience Movement. So did her youngest brother, a university student, before he could finish his degree. The Civil Disobedience Movement (in short, CDM) was a country-wide resistance campaign by government employees, where non-violent protest took place. Its goal was to inhibit the junta from maintaining a functioning system. Because of their family’s efforts to end the military rule, her father was arrested and detained for a long time.
Everyone who joined the resistance made a huge sacrifice for so many reasons. Participation was met with terrible punishments from the military government.
For Yun’s family, the outcome was atrocious;
“While we were hiding, my elder sister was shot and killed in front of my parents [by the military]. That experience deeply affected my whole family and still live with a fear and trauma from what happened. It is difficult for me to talk about this, but I want people to understand that behind every person who had to leave Myanmar there may be a very painful story.”
No words that I can write here can fully describe how difficult it is to picture the suffering that Yun and the rest of her family have endured. I feel so lucky to know her family that is here in Khao Lak, including her parents, brother, nieces and nephew. I have eaten her sweet mother’s delicious cooking (our conversations, containing minimal shared language, consist of her encouraging me to “sah, sah!” aka “eat, eat!” and me praising “sah-gaun-del” aka “delicious”) and watched together as her grandson in grade 4 lived up to his school-wide reputation and played football unbelievably well at the learning centre’s sports days. I teach one of her nieces at the learning centre, who is one of the most eager and quick to learn students. I’ve played games made up by her bright and spunky youngest niece. I’ve gone to the yearly memorial for her sister. Each of them has a distinct and genuine warmth and gentleness about them that I can only wish to emulate.
Their suffering did not simply end when they left Myanmar, though; “After everything my family had been through, we lost our livelihoods and a family member; we were also fed up. The situation in Myanmar was only getting worse. We no longer felt safe. So, my family decided to come to Thailand to find safety and start a new life. Even after we arrived in Thailand, our family home in Myanmar was burned down about two years later. Now, there’s nothing left.” This home was also a family restaurant and a space for students who boarded with them. It contained memories, family photographs, and important documents.
The military government’s continued impact on Yun and her family is not an isolated circumstance; so many Myanmar migrants still suffer due to the junta long after they leave the country.
Soe Min leads the Myanmar staff at ULC. At the learning centre, there are both Thai and Myanmar people working here. The Thai staff are referred to as teachers, while the Myanmar staff are “childcare assistants”. Although he is an authority figure at the school, it’s obvious how much students of all ages admire Soe Min, and it’s even more evident how deeply he cares for each of the children here. Every day, he’s at the Learning Centre from the time the first school bus arrives until the last one departs, feeling he cannot rest while his students aren’t home. While my Burmese language skills are still too limited to follow, I can tell by the light, bantering tone of the conversations between him and “his children” as he walks through the courtyard how comfortable they feel around him. It seems he was made for this role. He has had plenty of experience, too; he was formerly a middle school headmaster near the village of Mahlaing in the Mandalay region of Myanmar. There, he managed over 200 students and around 20 teachers. He was passionate about supporting his students to reach their highest potential. He told me he “regarded the school as my second home and the teachers my second family,” and put it simply that “before the coup, I was so happy.”
But this was all before 2021. When the military government took power, Soe Min was on the front lines of the revolt, participating as a member of the Civil Disobedience Movement, just like Yun and her brothers. He protested alongside other government workers, requesting that the previous democratic leaders be freed from prison and that fraudulent election results be revealed. The current Myanmar government responded by trying to arrest CDM members. When the threat became too significant and living at home peacefully and safely was no longer viable, Soe Min fled Myanmar.
Now in Thailand, he holds a similar position to his work previously. “But it’s not the same.” There are so many confines placed on migrants, adults and children alike, that Soe Min struggles to find the same purpose; “In Myanmar, I can give full support to my Myanmar children, but here there are a lot of limitations. I never feel I am safe here as a migrant. I cannot do anything for my students, migrant children. So, to be honest, I am not happy here.” The limitations spoken of make a long list. For one, the documentation process is a frustrating system; many important documents, such as birth certificates and passports, are under the control of the Myanmar government. Emigrants may be refused access to updating their documents if they were involved in behaviour supporting the revolution, such as CDM members who have been blacklisted by the government, or may need to return to Myanmar to update paperwork, which is not an option for many. Even children face consequences if their parents are undocumented, like ineligibility to enroll in school. In Soe Min’s words, “If we do not have documents, we cannot live here, we cannot work here, we cannot learn here.” Some people, however, have no option but to try to live, work, and learn in Thailand regardless of the struggle.
Not only are there struggles with documentation, but migrants also have other worries as well. For many, their thoughts are still in Myanmar with the people they have had to leave behind. Soe Min’s parents and relatives are still living in his former village, where they live in daily fear of increased military attacks: “The soldiers are marching into a village, the villagers run away, and they hide in the forest. At that time, the soldiers try to burn the houses, and they try to take everything. And when they are out, they leave the village as ash.” Especially targeting rural areas, these attacks can be used to clear contested areas, force young people to join conscription, and take down local rebellion groups. The fear associated with it makes it difficult for people to go on with their daily lives. This applies to those directly in the areas that are likely to be targeted and those, like Soe Min, who are far away but have loved ones there. “At this time, if one of my relatives or my parents were killed, I could not go back home. This is our feeling.”
Soe Min, like so many others, is just waiting for the opportunity to return to Myanmar when safety and peace are secured. Currently, the situation there remains bleak; “They kill Myanmar people almost every day; they drop bombs over the hospitals, the schools, and even over the religious buildings.” In the meantime, he is supporting his students and staff in person at ULC. He is also still providing financial support to the people still fighting in his township, even though his budget is tight. I will provide links below on ways you can support, too. He still holds hope for a future free of corrupt rule:
“The people do not stand with the government. This government cannot rule the people. I think so. I hope so. I believe so. I believe some day, not far away from now, someday we will win and we will get our democracy again. When our country is peaceful again, I will go back to Myanmar, and I will try to rebuild everything as possible as I can. This is my hope.”
Yuna is a new addition to ULC and has only been here for about 2 months. She fits in well already, viewed as both a role model and friend by the older students that she teaches at the school. Prior to this, she was teaching in northern Thailand for another branch of FED. She’s also my new neighbour and my knowledgeable F1 race guide! I’m grateful for her fresh presence at school and at home. Originally, she’s from just outside of Yangon, in a town called Thongwa. It has a river running on either side, so to enter and exit you must cross over a bridge. Before the coup, Yuna was in her first year at East Yangon University, studying International Relations. “I want to be a diplomat. I want to work in NGOs to help people,” says Yuna. Her plan remains the same today: “to participate in transitional justice and also help especially young people to continue their education.”
While the coup did not change her dream, it did alter her life’s path. While Yuna is not a directly displaced person, the army conscription laws created little other option than to leave Myanmar. The military government announced the Conscription Law, a compulsory military service to maintain ranks. This is why Yuna decided to leave. They collect “people, especially young people, and send them to the Tatmadaw [combined military of Myanmar]. They have no training, and they are forced to go join the war. So, it’s very, very, very terrible.” This issue is worsening; those with the financial means can buy trafficked people to take their place in the military. In Yangon, young people are urged to not go out after dark for fear of being taken and trafficked by people posing as military soldiers and Pyu Saw Htee, a group that supports the military regime.
When she left Myanmar, she had to leave her educational progress behind as well. Currently, she’s trying to find a way back to university here in Thailand, but it is a challenging and expensive goal. Yuna is still young, with a long future ahead of her, but the barriers are daunting: “Sometimes I give up my dream. I have struggled with a lot of mental health problems.” The system is not easy to navigate as a migrant, no matter the reasons behind leaving the home country. Costs are high, processes are complicated, and solutions are not always easy to find. But still, Yuna persists, and I believe she will be able to finish her degree and help those in need.
The teacher whom I assist in teaching Grade 5 English is Luke, a 25-year-old who spent his formative years in Mandalay at a monastic school. He is very well-liked by the student population, and I admire how he treats every child like a person worthy of his time, which teachers everywhere can learn from. He cares deeply about their upbringings and future opportunities. He also thinks critically about the education system and how society could improve. I always enjoy our conversations about the way our world functions and different possibilities that break away from the status quo. He’s also an impressive surfer and – though I hate to admit it – better than me, despite the fact that I’m the one who taught him how.
It’s sometimes hard to believe that the Luke that I’ve described above also served as a member of the People’s Defence Force (PDF). The PDF is one of the armed resistance groups fighting against the military. It arose after the coup to protect civilians who were defenceless against the military’s power. As mentioned, there are many ethnic groups throughout Myanmar. Some were already suffering before 2021 from unfair treatment and “already had their own armies. As Burmese people, we had the military. But when the military regime took power, we raised our own army.” Life in the PDF is not easy, including living in the jungle in unsafe conditions that breed disease, little food besides what can be gathered from the environment when supplies run out, and direct combat with Tatmadaw (the military’s armed wing), with the risk of being captured and tortured for information. A large portion of the PDF’s members are young men who are eager to fight against the junta that is controlling their home. Weapons can sometimes be handmade and extra dangerous to those on either of their ends. It is a difficult and unsafe existence but also creates a strong bond between members in the same troop. Luke was serving in Karen State. He says, “I loved it, I loved being in PDF, I loved working with other comrades. But I didn’t like hiding and killing at all.”
After two years serving in the PDF, Luke made the decision to leave. He could not stand the violence involved, and his true passion lay in teaching. “It was not an easy decision. It was very hard to leave my brothers, my comrades, because I was there for 2 years, and in 2 years a lot of things happened. We were more than friends; we were like brothers.” Despite their bond, his comrades supported and encouraged his decision to leave. “They know that I’m not into fighting; I’m not into hurting people. And they know I love teaching, so they encouraged me to just move to Thailand and do what I love.” In turn, he now supports them financially as best he can. While the Myanmar military is being monetarily fueled by global powers such as the Chinese government and energy companies that benefit from its richness in natural resources, it’s hard for rebel groups to compete. Much of its funding comes from crowdfunding and the civilian National Unity Government (NUG).
For now, Luke is continuing to teach. Like many others, he holds hope even though the odds are currently stacked unfairly against the freedom of Myanmar people; “The regime is doing everything they can to, you know, keep their power and to control the country. But also, on the other hand, we all are trying. All the resistance groups are trying to take down the military as much as we can.” It is hard to plan for a future that is still so uncertain and leaves many young people in a state of aimless pause. As Luke puts it bluntly, “I might say that as long as our country is not getting better, as long as our country isn’t stable yet, there is no future for me.” In the long run, however, as soon as the country is freed from the current regime, Luke has “a dream of creating a community, creating a learning centre, where everyone can come and learn and do what they love to do. No matter their financial background, no matter their religion, no matter whatever. So this is my dream, but just like I mentioned, there won’t be any future; there won’t be anything that I can do if our country is still under the military.”
I wish that words on a screen could properly convey what it’s like to look at someone, a friend, and try to conceptualize what horrific things they’ve had to endure, but I feel confident it doesn’t. Just as me listening to their stories is not the same as actually experiencing them. All I can hope is that by sharing these stories, it makes some people care, even just a little more. It’s easy to turn a blind eye in Canada when suffering is veiled through screens and foreign news reporters, hidden between short videos of AI satire and superficially controversial hot takes. But I beg of you to not look away. In my opinion, this is why the state of Myanmar is so horrific; there are enough resources in the world to fight the junta and give these people that I care so much about, the safety to return home. That is all they want. We are so insanely privileged in Western countries to complain as much as we do about the pointless things that we care so much about, and ignore the real inequalities of the world. I’ve provided links below to places to donate and resources about Myanmar. For the price of a matcha latte in Victoria, that is sometimes all that a student at ULC can afford to eat in a week. Do with that what you will, but try to do what you can.
Learn more:
War with the Junta (documentary about Myanmar’s battlegrounds)
Recent Time article about Myanmar’s dictator trying to make ties with the West
A somewhat comprehensive summary of Myanmar’s past
Consider donating:
Foundation for Education and Development (where I am an intern)
Better Burma – offers humanitarian support
NUG – Shadow government-in-exile in Myanmar formed in opposition to the military junta
