A Tribute to the Fallen Student
Our local team leader has shared the following personal story:
After all the tides of depression and devastation over the last week, I finally got back to my daily work and concentrated on writing this report. I do so with a heavy heart, but I want to honor my former student who led this rice donation project for vulnerable villagers. This is what I need to tell you all: this former student of mine, who I taught in grade-9 when I was volunteering at a rural community school five years ago, has been killed.
He had been participating in administrative work since the coup in 2021. Before then, he was working and studying at a jade handcraft workshop in Mandalay but returned to his village when businesses were shut down after the coup in February and the nation-wide protests that followed. He witnessed how the dreams of low- and middle-income people were dashed; youths in his age group were shot and killed by the coup junta’s forces in Mandalay. So he came back to his village and joined a local, village defense team to protect it from the junta’s forces.
Although he and I were friends, we had not been in touch with each other until last April. On a trip from my hometown to [redacted name] town, I met a local defense team on the highway who were checking the cars and buses. He was there; he saw me, came to my car window and greeted me. I was surprised and felt proud of him. Since then, we had kept in touch, but mainly just online chit chat. Then a month later, his village was raided by the military, and over 500 houses were burned dto ash. He contacted me and requested me to help his fellow villagers, who fled from their village barefoot and had little food. I told him to contact me again in three months, and by then I was able to help because of all your donors’ generous assistance.
For safety reasons, he and I had to talk through a secret app. He first invited me to an IDP camp in a nearby village where his fellow villagers are living. Because it was truly unsafe to travel to those areas, I just said to him that I would visit the next time an opportunity arose. Meanwhile, he sent me videos and photos of his village with its torched homes. After some time, we were finally able to deliver the funds to his team safely; he bought rice, and divided it into smaller packs for roughly 390 families.
The last time we were in touch with each other was in mid-September. He was trying and talking to me to help his villagers to build some temporary, bamboo huts in the villages where they have settled. As I was feeling some kind of premonition, I told him to be very careful, and he promised me he would, highlighting that he had been devoting his life for the country and people. And then, the terrible news came last week that he and his team members, aged 19-23, were shot dead by the junta’s forces in their local township. Including his team, 27 people were shot dead. On that night and the next early morning, other former students of mine sent me the photos of their death and texted me that he had fallen. He was just 21 years old. I couldn’t help but shed tears on hearing this devastating news. Many local news outlets published this news later.
After this tragic nightmare, I went back to my hometown and tried to contact anyone on his team but could not contact anyone for security reasons. One of the vulnerable villagers from his village is also my relative but I cannot contact him yet, either.
In writing this report, I am honoring my former pupil who had sacrificed his life for the Burmese people and the country’s freedom. I would like to bring this message about this brutal murder, as well as all the many other atrocities committed by the junta since 2021, to the attention of the international community. I would like to request the international community to help restore peace and justice to our country, and save our innocent people who have been fighting for freedom and democracy. And, on behalf of my fallen former student, I am sending my deepest gratitude to all the donors and everyone who has been helping our vulnerable communities.
In conclusion, I would like to salute that student, and all the youth who have sacrificed their lives for the freedom and democracy of the country, with a following verse of the poem which was composed by Thakhin Kodaw Hmaing, the famous writer and Myanmar’s peace activist of the British Colonial times and post-independence civil war period, to salute his former student General Aung San after their demise in 1947.
“အလွန်ကောင်းစွာ ကမ္ဘာတည်မည့်
အာဇာနည်ဗိမာန် ပုထိုးကိုဖြင့်
ပါရမီဓိဌာန်တစ်မျိုးရယ်နှင့်
ရှိခိုးကာ ဆရာကန်တော့ချင်ရဲ့ ။”
“May I (your teacher) pay respect and homage,
As a merit and determination,
To the Martyrs’ Mausoleum,
Which will last until the end of the Earth.”