When ‘living becomes harder than dying’: The quiet crisis consuming Yangon

Editors Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, support is available. Please reach out to a trusted local helpline: +95 9 765 400 200 (Mental Health Support Line – Myanmar Red Cross Society)– Once a city brimming with hope and energy under a decade of fledgling civilian rule, Yangon has been hollowed out by war and economic collapse. Since the military seized power in the February 2021 coup, daily life has grown increasingly desperate, with millions pushed to the edge of hunger, despair, and a rising wave of suicides. On August 31, 27-year-old Kyaw Zwa Win was driving his delivery van through Yangon’s North Dagon Township when a group of men armed with knives surrounded and robbed him in broad daylight. The next day, September 1, he took his own life. It’s a tragically similar story for many others in a country where desperation is widespread and suffering is abundant. Kyaw Zwa Win’s close friend Elena Seine told Myanmar Now that he was working hard to pay off a debt of about $3,210 US dollars—an amount daunting enough to take one’s life in Myanmar. Kyaw Zwa Win and his wife, Sandar Thein, had borrowed the money from relatives in order to repay the fee Sandar Thein owed to her agent in Dubai for her return home to Myanmar. Before returning to Myanmar, Sandar Thein had spent five months working as a maid in Dubai. The conditions were so harsh that she was given only one meal a day, said Elena. She couldn’t endure it any longer. “It was so bad she could only eat one meal per day for a period of five months,” Elena said. “She was getting sick as a result.” Elena said Sandar Thein was noticeably emaciated when she returned from Dubai. She had also developed painful mouth ulcers, which her employer in Dubai did not allow her to get checked by a doctor. The couple worked tirelessly to pay off their debt—Kyaw Zwa Win by running deliveries across Yangon, and Sandar Thein by working at a new job in a local minimart. A portrait of Sandar Thein taken at her workplace in Yangon (Photo: Thuwunna Social Rescue Team) But despite their efforts, their hardship only deepened. On that August afternoon, when Kyaw Zwa Win was ambushed by a gang on Yangon’s industrial outskirts, it was too much to bear. The gang robbed him of more than 2 million kyat, or around US$500. Just hours later—at exactly midday—he was ordered to repay the full amount to the owner of the stolen money, Elena said. “He tried reaching out for help as the owner kept calling him,” she said. “Unfortunately, he could not find any solutions to his predicament. In the end, he jumped off a bridge in Yangon on September 2.” The couple were both in their twenties and had been married for just five years. Despite their struggles, the day before his death, Kyaw Zwa Win even sent his wife to a salon to get the hairstyle she’d been wanting. “They were not only a loving couple, but they were honest and hard-working people,” Elena said. “Plus, they were kind to others too.” At just 25, Sandar Thein was already carrying the weight of crushing debt in a country unraveling under economic collapse and a deepening job crisis. And when her husband died, that last thread of purpose seemed to snap. Eleven days later, she followed him. “On September 13, she eventually took her life,” Elena said. “When staying alive has become a hard choice, dying becomes an easy decision.” ‘I am very suffocated’ Sandar Thein’s phone and slippers were found abandoned near Pyidaungsu Bridge shortly before she jumped (Photo: Thuwunna Social Rescue Team) Elena explained that Sandar Thein had faced hardship for as long as she could remember. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her aunt and her aunt’s husband: the only family she had. They had supported her financially to work in Dubai, hoping it would give her a better future. But 11 days after her husband’s death, a grieving Sandar sent a short text to her aunt’s phone. Moments later, she ended her life from the same bridge where her husband had jumped.“Dear aunt, I am very grateful to you for everything,” the letter read. “But I am very suffocated, please forgive me for this.” Sandar Thein’s aunt, who struggles with using her phone, didn’t discover the message her niece had sent until five days after her death. By then, it was far too late. Since then, she has often wept while rereading the message, clinging to it as one of the last traces of Sandar’s life. The tragedy has left those close to her shattered, overwhelmed by a grief that continues to linger. “If not for those hardships, they would not have died,” Elena said, blaming Myanmar’s political and economic collapse for pushing the couple to despair. In today’s Yangon, she added, looting, muggings, and robberies have become a daily reality, leaving ordinary people with little sense of security or hope. Myanmar Now attempted to contact Kyaw Zwa Win and Sandar Thein’s family members, but they did not respond to interview requests. In a local news report about the couple’s death, many netizens have pointed their fingers at the crippling economy, attributing deaths of young people to the junta. “The main culprit of their death is him,” one social media user said, referring to the junta chief and coupmaker Min Aung Hlaing. Another person posted online: “In this country, living has become harder than dying. This is what life has become here.” Online, many people shared that they too had experienced moments of desire to end their lives, driven by financial hardship in the years since the coup. In the same week that Sandar Thein died, another couple—Kaung San and his girlfriend—also took their lives by jumping from a bridge in Yangon. Phyo Maung, a close friend of the couple who asked to be identified by a pseudonym due to privacy concerns, told Myanmar Now that they reached a point where life felt hopeless. He said his friends didn't show any signs of being suicidal when he met them just two days before their death. But he later realised that they had been quietly suffering under the same financial strain that has weighed on countless others across the country in the years since the military takeover. “It’s a stressful life to live under the coup,” Phyo Maung said. “It looked like he was under deep pressure and could not find a way out.” Struggles spiraling A man sleeps on his motorcycle as motorists queue to fill their vehicles at a petrol station in Yangon on August 16, 2024 (Photo: AFP) Since the coup, Myanmar has plunged into an all-out civil war, while its economy has hit rock bottom, leaving the vast majority of its 54 million people grappling with diminishing employment opportunities amid skyrocketing food and commodity prices. According to the UN’s World Food Programme, nearly a third of the population is facing food insecurity, driven by conflict, a deteriorating economy, pre-existing poverty, and climate-related impacts. A recent powerful earthquake and significant cuts in humanitarian assistance have only added to the immense hardships bearing down on the country’s people. “The country has hit an all-time peak in hunger levels; a staggering 16.7 million people—almost one in three—are projected to be food insecure in 2025, up from 13.3 million last year,” the WFP reported earlier this year. Myanmar now ranks fifth globally in the number of acutely food-insecure people, making it a hunger hotspot of very high concern, according to the report. The war has pushed war-displaced civilians to the brink of famine, while a growing segment of the country’s urban population is either unemployed or barely able to survive on wages that have failed to keep up with rising prices. The regime has done little to provide relief from inflation, apart from attempting to set “reference prices” on key commodities while ignoring its own role in the ongoing instability of the economy. Last month, the junta-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported that the price of palm oil in Yangon had risen to 6,610 kyat per viss (about 1.6kg)—more than the average garment worker earns in an entire day. “Despite the reference price, the market price is way too high,” the report said. “The department urges consumers not to buy palm oil at high prices.” Many have sought to escape by seeking employment overseas. But as Sandar Thein and countless others have learned, taking jobs in foreign countries often comes with a high risk of abuse and exploitation—both from labor brokers and employers. Tin Tin, a domestic worker in Oman who did not want to be identified by her real name, told Myanmar Now she has been deprived of sleep, food, and even basic medical care when she needs it. “I haven’t been well, but I can’t go back home, because I can’t afford to pay compensation to the agent, so I am in real trouble,” she said. “All I have had is the traditional medicine and honey brought by a Burmese colleague.” “Here in Oman, we are at the mercy of the house owner. I am supporting my mother and my younger sister. So I cannot ask them for help.” ‘Severe stress’ A boatman takes passengers across the Yangon River during a rainstorm (Photo: Myanmar Now) According to the World Health Organization, one in five people living in Myanmar’s conflict- affected areas are estimated to suffer from mental health problems, with older people and marginalised groups at particularly high risk. “Myanmar has experienced the emergency situations such as armed conflict, natural disasters and other humanitarian crises which can exacerbate the preexisting mental health conditions and trigger new mental health issues,” it said in a statement. It’s a concern shared by many mental health experts both in and outside of Myanmar.Dr. Ei, a mental health specialist who asked to use only her first name, told Myanmar Now that many people inside the country and abroad are now seeking online counselling as the effect of the war intensifies. “A lot of them are going through severe levels of stress,” she said. “Among those patients, many already have significant levels of mental disorders too.” Mounting evidence suggests worsening mental health in post-coup Myanmar, she added. And most patients are struggling with economic hardships and social instability, leaving them with little capacity to support others. Many young and middle-aged people are now also seeking therapy, while others turn to substances. “Uncertainty has become their reality,” Dr. Ei said, describing rising anxiety. “And their capabilities to solve varying obstacles at the same time are severely limited.” She added that many of her clients have confided in her about deep, unbearable mental anguish: some are haunted by suicidal thoughts, while others have already tried, and failed, to end their own lives. “In Myanmar these days, hardships after hardships just wait for people,” she said. “They are constantly shouldering prolonged burdens that many cannot bear.”

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