Three weeks after an elderly couple was killed in a fire set to their Magwe Region village by the junta’s armed forces, their children say they are still unable to gather their parents’ remains or hold a funeral for them.
Police torched around 200 of more than 230 houses in Kinma, Pauk Township, on June 15 after the military council’s forces clashed with local resistance fighters outside of the village.
The burned bodies of Mya Maung, 85, and Kyi Hmein, 83, were discovered the next day by the villagers. While other residents—including their eight children—fled, the couple had stayed behind and hid in their home.
“We haven’t even offered the monks meals in their names,” the couple’s 50-year-old son Myint Maung told Myanmar Now, referring to a traditional practice carried out after a loved one passes away.
Myint Maung added that he was still too afraid to collect his parents’ ashes, due to the military council’s continued hostilities in the area.
“There weren’t many people left in the village, since no one dared to stay there anymore and also because we didn’t have anywhere to hide there,” he explained of the circumstances at the time of the attack.
“We just had to leave them behind,” he said of his parents.
As he was preparing to flee, Myint Maung said he had warned his brother, who had stayed behind with their mother and father, to move them to safety. They had heard a rumour that the junta’s soldiers would be coming to the village that night.
“My parents were just getting ready to leave when the troops arrived, fully armed. So my mom just told my brother to leave on his own, and she stayed behind, thinking they would only take their belongings. Who would have thought they would set everything on fire,” he said.
Even the monks from the village’s monastery have not returned to Kinma since the fire, as they depend on food donations to survive and the residents’ food supplies were destroyed, Myint Maung explained.
“Not that I expect anything from anyone but I really wish I had enough money to give my parents a proper burial. No one even has the money to help us fund this during these times. I just wish I had enough funds to make some donations in their names,” he said of Mya Maung and Kyi Hmein.
Other villagers from Kinma told Myanmar Now that they feel the destruction of their community—which had a population of 1,000—signifies a particularly tragic loss in the terror perpetrated by the military nationwide since the February 1 coup.
“We couldn’t even clean up the area,” a Kinma local said, adding that he did not know how many years it would take to rebuild the village.
The displaced residents of Kinma also fear that due to the continued occupation of the area by the junta’s armed forces, there is a risk that they will strike at the village again if locals return.
Since their livestock was killed and their farming equipment destroyed in the fire, Kinma’s villagers have opted to remain in hiding in the surrounding forests, noting that the junta’s attack has left them unable to plant crops to survive the coming year.
“We’re going to have to get through this rainy season with no house and no farm,” a villager said.
A local man who visited the site of the village in late June told Myanmar Now that only Kinma’s monastery and the school were still standing.
“The entire village reeks of decay. The trees are still hot from the fire. You can see the remains of the destroyed tractors, motorcycles and bikes,” he said. “It’s like a battlefield. They have lost everything in the fire and I can only hope that their spirits are not yet lost.”
While charity groups have reportedly been collecting donations for the displaced residents of Kinma, locals said that they have received 1 million kyat at most, or around US$600.
One villager pointed out that neither the military council nor the anti-coup National Unity Government had offered them any support since Kinma was destroyed.
The military council claimed on June 18 in its own media that the fire was set as an act of terrorism by 40 members of the local resistance force, and alleged that their own Myanmar military troops had helped try to extinguish it.
The villagers who Myanmar Now spoke with have unanimously reported that the fire was set by the military, in retaliation for up to 15 casualties the junta’s forces allegedly suffered in an ambush outside of Kinma.
A resistance fighter also previously rejected the suggestion that his group set the fires.
“Our defence forces would never do that. We will only act for the security of the people,” he said.
