Losing Everything

We are sharing an update from our ongoing campaign to provide aid to the monastic support network that Kyun Pyin Sayadaw and other leading monks and nuns have established.

Military assaults have continued to target rural villages in the Sagaing Division, and many of Kyun Pin’s supporters have been driven from their homes. The meditation center has therefore been welcoming internally displaced persons into their grounds, and that necessitates more supplies to care for them.

We were further informed that two additional villages comprising 1,600 homes have been burned to the ground this month, resulting in 2,000 people becoming immediately homeless. They further shared that the military now has a policy of coming back to the site of these atrocities to burn any remaining structures missed on the first visit. They added that soldiers typically launched either airstrikes or ground assaults on these defenseless villages three times per week.

One 82-year old woman, with a pregnant daughter, lost her house in one of these villages. This news was heard by Kyupin Sayardaw and his group of monks. Thanks to the donation fund we provided, they were able to quickly build a temporary shelter. However, the military came back only weeks later to burn this temporary abode as well. At present, she is alive and well, but she is now living with other IDPs. You can see her interview below.

Sayadaw informed us that their greatest need is food, as villagers and monastic alike have little more than basic rice now. They need to urgently find a way to provide food for the likes of these thousands of people, made all the more dire by the recent arrests of aid workers trying to help. Additionally, with winter fast approaching, blankets are also needed for the communities who have lost everything and are now sleeping outside. Next, they are trying to give a small stipend of 50,000 kyat ($18) to those villagers whose home was burned to the ground, so that they may acquire what they urgently need to survive. Finally, medicine is also needed for the mobile medical clinics they are now setting up. They estimate that with a fund of just $4,000, they can cover all these basic yet urgent needs. Even the smallest contribution will help!