As indiscriminate war ravages Myanmar, the locals have given up any hope of help
Wednesday 19 July 2023 11:14, UK
Four armed soldiers dressed in camouflage emerged from a building that had been battered in recent fighting.
On the back of our truck, our security detail exchanged pleasantries with the men. They're from different organisations and different armies, but they're all fighters of the resistance to the Myanmar regime.
Our driver Shine asks one of the soldiers if the road is safe. He warned us that the Myanmar military soldiers had been shooting at vehicles but that we should be okay if we are careful.
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I didn't really know what to think as Shine gunned the engine and we drove off, the soldiers waving us goodbye.
After a month of this we had got used to being in constant danger. When I say "got used to" what I mean is, we had learnt to accept that nowhere is safe amidst the Myanmar civil war.
Basically, driving on was no more or less dangerous than turning back, because the battle space changes by the minute, and you are only as safe as you feel at any given moment.
The scars of the war litter the roads throughout this country - they're evident in the temporary checkpoints and roadblocks set up on the back roads, the burnt-out Myanmar army trucks on the side of the road, and the eery, deadly quiet empty towns and villages you pass through.
The local population has all moved away and these are desperately dangerous places. The deserted towns are the de-facto frontlines in this war, and who is in control here changes constantly.
We travelled to three different states in Myanmar, and everywhere we went the picture was the same. Houses, schools, churches, medical clinics, and hospitals all destroyed, mainly from the air.
One destroyed hospital we visited was a well signposted regional hospital, and yet in April the Saung Phee Hospital in Shan State, was targeted in multiple airstrikes.
It was clear from the aftermath that the hospital was occupied at the time, patients were still being treated when it was hit.
Room after room of destroyed hospital beds, some with drips still hanging next to them.
In one of the rooms a needle sat in a bottle as if it was just about to be dispensed when everyone had to run for their lives.
Some of the internally displaced who have lost their homes and communities, are now living in tarpaulin huts alongside their rice fields.
Others have built temporary villages from bamboo.
Regina and her Aunty Timore, live in one of these temporary camps. They have moved multiple times now.
"We don't know the reasons we are being attacked, but we have never faced something like this before," Regina told me.
"When the fighting first started, we ran for a long time, and then when our money ran out, we came back here, so we can at least still tend to our farms, to try to make money," the 37-year-old said.
In Leteng in Shan State, we met hundreds of internally displaced families living in one abandoned school. The IDP's had come from a town just over the valley, forced out by the fighting between government soldiers and opposition fighters.
They had no access to medical care at all, and on this day the Free Burma Rangers, a volunteer warzone medic unit, was running a clinic to help anyone they could.
They treated 204 people in just three hours. Such is the need.
Tens of thousands of people across Myanmar are living in abject poverty, and this is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster.
Daw Phyu, 54, has set up temporary house in a simple tarpaulin hut. Her husband, she says, was killed by the Myanmar military, and this set-up is the best she can do for now.
"The army is doing this because they want authority, but even if they want authority what they are doing isn't right, they are not only shooting at their enemy, but shooting at us civilians and farmers," she explained.
Daw Phyu doesn't believe the killing will stop until someone does something to help.
"I would like to ask the world, please have mercy on us. Even if they say stop, they just do it more, and if nobody does anything we will all die."
In some states nearly everyone has lost everything. Even their "safe" spaces are gone.
In one town in Karenni (Kayah) State, the St Matthew's Catholic Church that once stood proud has been completely gutted, set on fire by the army as they retreated.
"I feel very sad, very sorry, and at the same time furious that I lost my church here," the parish priest Father Noreh told me.
"We lost our church, and it's as if we are losing our lives, losing our faith…"
"But this is a crime," I said to him.
"But they don't care for that, even they don't care about the world, the outsiders, and they do what they like, we don't have freedom, we don't have opportunities, our places destroyed, our villages burnt down, who do that? Only the military," he replied somewhat hopelessly.
When the soldiers retreated during a fierce battle, they also laid landmines because they knew people would come back here.
A scorched earth policy designed to send a message to opposition forces and civilians that nothing is sacred.
Dave Eubank, the founder of the Free Burma Rangers, was here when St Matthews was destroyed last year.
He told me it's a pattern they're noticing more frequently across Myanmar.
"They know people will come, they want to kill people, maim them… so they never come back, and we see this every place, not every place, but every area we go, and what I have noticed since the coup is it's almost one a week, a church or school has been destroyed in Burma by airstrike, by burning, by mortars, very selectively and very purposely trying to kill people and break their will."
Time and again people ask us why the international community won't help them, and we don't have any clear answers for them.
But help is needed.
One of the local commanders is known as Maui, after the Disney character. It's his "revolutionary name". He was an organic farmer - he is now a fighter.
Maui, like so many people we met, doesn't understand why the world isn't helping them, and like many he draws parallels with the help to Ukraine.
"They always say that they are concerned, they're deeply concerned, they're strongly, deeply concerned, they use a lot of grammar words but not action, so yeah, we realise that we have to do it ourselves, that we have to fight it ourselves," he replied when I asked if he feels the outside world is doing its bit.
"It's nothing different from Ukraine, Russia is a big thing and Ukraine is minority, Ukraine also fight for their autonomy, fight for their future, the same thing, I fight for my future, I fight for my generation's futures."
Like most people we met, Maui has given up waiting for that help to come.
Whatever they say, the Myanmar military government is attacking its own people.
A whole generation could grow up never knowing peace, and never knowing what home actually means.
Stuart Ramsay reports from inside Myanmar with senior foreign producer Dominique Van Heerden, and camera operator Richie Mockler.