Myanmar, the military junta no longer wants displaced persons: they have a month to “relocate”, the reception centers have been forbidden to host them.

YANGON (AsiaNews) – The latest report fromUnited Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) says there are over one million displaced people in Myanmar. But for the military regime that took power in a coup d’état and then started a civil conflict in February 2021, the concept of “internally displaced people” must no longer exist. The Burmese military gave a month to the population – in particular those who took refuge in the Sagaing, a central region with a Burmese majority – to find a relocation. In practical terms, it means finding a home and a job and continuing with your life as if there were no brutal conflicts going on in the country, now spreading everywhere, even in states that until a few months ago had been spared, such as the Rakhine. But he also wants to say that those who offered hospitality to refugees can no longer do so. Inspections by the army have increased: soldiers show up even in the middle of the night, pointing their rifles at civilians, including children, to check that the number of people in a house corresponds to that on the resident lists, say the sources of AsiaNews.

United Nations Agencies have been banned from bringing aid. The burden of assisting the population falls on the small local realities, which however find it increasingly difficult to work. It is forbidden to carry food, medicine, mattresses, sheet metal roofs: anything that suggests humanitarian aid. Penalty for immediate arrest. “We can’t order painkillers, not even paracetamol, from suppliers because soldiers open packages at checkpoints and confiscate medicines,” a pharmacist said. Those who escaped from the army and took refuge in the forests (churches and monasteries are no longer safe) risk dying from snake bites because poisons are no longer found. Since June in the Sagaing at least four people have died like this. Now the dry season begins and without rain it is easier to fight because visibility improves and there is no mud on the streets: the movements of men and armaments are more agile, so the conflict in the coming months is destined to intensify. “It had already happened last year and it will happen again, no doubt”, the sources explain.

The burden of opposition to the regime weighs on young people. The shadow government of national unity, made up of former deputies in exile, has said in recent days that the People’s Defense Forces (the anti-coup troops that fight the junta together with the ethnic militias of the various states) will launch the last offensive and within a year the war will be over. Among civilians (but perhaps especially among those who fight) no one believes in it. There are two categories of people most affected by the conflict: young people and those who had taken part in the civil disobedience movement immediately after the coup. Among the former, three groups can in turn be distinguished: those who have enlisted in the militias, those who try to leave the country and “those who get by”. The school dropout is very high, according to some estimates it could be 80% “Surely 60% of the students did not go back to school”, they tell us. Drug use has increased because “there is nothing to be done. There are those who go to fight because he believes in democratic ideals but many do it only to kill someone. Depression, addictions and trauma are increasingly widespread ”.

General Min Aung Hlaing is the worst of all Myanmar dictators. The young and the very young are the generation that least of all would have expected a return to a military regime after a decade of democratic overtures. It is the same generation that immediately after the coup took to the streets to protest peacefully: those who had already lived through the dictatorship, on the other hand, understood, after the first shot was fired, that things would get worse quickly and the army would try to take control of the country. But General Min Aung Hlaing, self-proclaimed prime minister, “is the worst of all the dictators that Myanmar has ever had.” For the rhetoric he uses and the violence he unleashed. Those who had taken part in the civil disobedience movement now find themselves with nothing: “most are registered, and cannot be hired, under penalty of arrest for the employer. It is not malice, but fear of possible retaliation ”.

“Resistance fights in flip flops”. The only hope is given by the fact that the army could struggle to keep open all the fronts on which it is fighting, but “while China has understood that it does not want to get involved in this conflict because it has nothing to gain” – continue the our sources – Russia continues to support the Burmese regime. “Resistance fights in flip flops. In some areas they are very strong but the various groups are also divided among themselves ”. Even if the conflict were to end, many wonder, will the ethnic militias – which have been fighting against the state since independence in 1948 – manage to come to an agreement and build a new Myanmar? It could be a few more years before we know it.

* Alessandra De Paoli writes for Asianews