No one has returned to the once-picturesque hilltop resort town of Thanduang in southern Myanmar.Six weeks after junta troops shelled the town in Kayin state, the more than 8,000 residents who fled are too scared to return to their homes for fear of further attacks by the military
Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the military coup and an ensuing civil war, Myanmar’s school system is in shambles. The number of high school students taking a key exam has plunged 80%, parents, teachers and educational experts say.
Residents of this community near where mass graves of trafficked migrants were discovered eight years ago say the border area is much quieter now – and they’re hoping it stays that way.
The conflict engulfing Myanmar in the wake of the 2021 military coup has led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians and ordinary people who took up arms to fight junta troops, who have raided and razed villages, bombed them from the air and rounded up hundreds for detention, torture or immediate execution.
Two teenagers found beheaded last week were two of the most gruesome victims of an escalating number of violent incidents that the United Nations’ special rapporteur says are “consistent with patterns of brutality” among forces affiliated with the military junta.
Myanmar’s deposed State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint have not been allowed to meet with their legal team since their trials ended in December of last year, Radio Free Asia has learned.
Residents and internally displaced persons in Myanmar’s war-torn Kayah state are facing a humanitarian emergency as junta forces confiscate food and medicine at dozens of security checkpoints along major land routes in the southeastern state as fighting there intensifies, local sources said
Myanmar’s junta has focused much of its military firepower on Kayin state, carrying out 57 airstrikes on two key areas in January alone, highlighting the strategic importance of the area bordering Thailand rife with armed resistance groups and political opponents in hiding.
A rapid expansion in illegal gold mining since the military coup is poisoning the water supply in Myanmar’s Kachin state and destroying the livelihoods of residents who say the ethnic Kachin group that administers the region has failed to police the sector.
Ethnic Chin soldiers claim to have taken control of nearly all of Thantlang township in Chin state, in western Myanmar near India, despite the junta’s recent declaration of martial law in the area, but residents who fled fighting say they cannot return home amid the risk of military airstrikes.