A Personal Reflection

We share this message with our dear donors who have been with us for over two years now as we have been providing humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations across Myanmar who have been impacted by the violent military coup. Thank you so much for your ongoing support! While we often update about the various donation events that our team leader has arranged, there is often little time and space to go into the personal dangers that accompany his selfless work. And so at this moment, we share a personal reflection that he wrote upon returning home from one such donation event.

I am writing this email with a heartfelt sorrowful and frightened heart for the people in my home community. On our arriving home, sorrowful news as awaiting us. Yesterday morning, my family informed me that there was an explosive object that no one knows who laid on the road in front of our house and in two other places. It was a cardboard box in which the iron pipe-alike object was put. On the cardboard, it was written “Deadly! Dog food.” A demon force [e.g. a soldier] came and shot at the object from the rooftop of our neighbor’s house. It was quite frightening for them and the object was removed after several fires at it. Last midnight and at dawn today, they came near our house and fired up into the sky several times. 

Again today, 3 demons came with guns and seemed waiting for something in front of the opposite house. In the afternoon, there were twenty military trucks passed by. We heard five continuous bomb explosions very near our house. We all thought that some bombs were dropped by the drones on the trucks. We also heard the local news on social media with photos that about 200 houses in the nearest village of our town were burned down by demon forces this morning. It quite seems the military campaigns are being speeded up by both sides.

When we arrived back home, we heard from our neighbors that there was a military campaign by a troop of demons to the village in the east of our town and the troop came back and took a rest near our house. They also fired up towards the glasses on the second floor of our house and we saw four bullet holes and some smoke dust on the concrete beams and columns. Our neighbors guessed that our house was closed for several days and no one was living, hence, the demons wished to steal the things from the house. It was lucky that my brother and dad went back some days earlier than us. It’s likely to see the accelerating campaigns by the defense forces even downtown soon. 

Another thing is I read in a news report about the leaked command of SAC to restrict the ‘Western democratic teachings’ in the private schools which they consider to be against Myanmar's ‘cultural values.’ Well, it’s funny. However, I think there would be restrictions and difficulties to register the private schools soon.