Giving Back
We have allocated some of your donation fund to the good work that volunteers like Mumtaz are doing. Read below to hear her story.
Since early February, 23 year old Mumtaz has been working with a group of volunteers in her working class Yangon neighborhood to provide food, cash support, and other assistance to struggling families around the city’s public hospitals and railway stations.
In her words, “Since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was suddenly detained on 1st of February, Myanmar has no future under the junta.” She has taken whatever actions she, a young woman living on her own and struggling with a year of COVID-related unemployment, can to support the NLD and later NUG. “Our people are dying for democracy, fighting for justice, finding the better way for their kids.
“The junta shot at people with guns, funded with money made off the backs of citizens. So many citizens have now had to leave their homes to survive.” This, explained Mumtaz, includes workers at large public institutions such as hospitals and railway lines, which not only provide important services but are also vital sources of employment. Over the past month, Mumtaz and her fellow volunteers, mostly young people, have increasingly found themselves targeted.
“At first, the junta went for the CDM leaders,” many of whom have fled Yangon with their families. “Then they shot and tortured volunteers and killed them as well. They still arrest people who put themselves [forward as] CDM. Some of them are still in hiding. I am as well.”
“First I stayed with a friend of mine to be safe, but I did not know I could bring them into trouble. They were coming into the houses and checking ID cards and arrest people. My friend’s parents were panic and did not what to do. I left to be safe for them. I am still hiding. I don’t want to die like that. They rape girls. They insult adults. They beat, to the man, anyone who can still fight back a little.”
Before the coup, Mumtaz shared a small apartment with friends in Yangon, scrimping by on what she had saved from her secretarial job before the COVID pandemic. As a Rohingya Muslim woman, her path to this financial independence was not an easy one. “As a child, I had to do work, specifically I collected garbage to pay for school or to feed to my little brothers. I passed all the school years, all the examinations, but there have always has problems for Indian or Rohingya people.” As a “green card” (official IDs issued to Muslims from some states) holder, she was barred from entry to Yangon’s Computer Sciences University but was able to attend the Yangon University of Foreign Languages, where she majored in Russian Language. “I went to the rector to give me a chance, at first he did not allow me but some teachers helped convince him. I felt like I was a luckiest person in the world that I became a graduated person as I wanted it.” Mumtaz used her language skills to gain employment in Yangon’s growing tourism sector, brought her sister to Yangon for studies, and eventually obtained fully naturalized Myanmar citizenship.
While many in the west have focused on the NLD, and often Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself, in failing to protect the Rohingya, Mumtaz squarely blames the military for their problems. “Our elected leaders were the best path we had, and the path we chose for our future. The junta took that choice and now the people of Myanmar are in trouble. We need help.”