“After I die, take care of our children like I have done. Don’t remarry. I will keep an eye on you by the railroad,” 34-year-old Ma Aye Htwe Yi told her husband Ko Twan Oo Kyaw earlier this month, not long before she departed this life. 

Thalu Chaung villagers searched for him in the forest the following day, to no avail. The next day they did the same, with the same result. On the third day, they found U Maung Than Tun’s body in an area that was the scene of fierce fighting between the Myanmar military and Arakan Army in 2019 and 2020. Ko Oo Hla Than, a nephew of U Maung Than Tun, said the body was badly mangled, missing both an arm and a leg. 

But on June 12, 2012, Daw San Phyu’s family nest collapsed. Inter-communal conflict in Arakan State was spreading from town to town, and had reached Sittwe. She and her family were forced to flee along with thousands of other Muslims in several villages and towns across Arakan State. 

By early 2019, our family and many others in northern Arakan State were displaced. Some houses were torched, some people were killed or wounded by the war, and some were arrested.

Seven-year-old children, folding their arms in respect for the classroom they are a part of, repeat loudly what their teacher reads. The children, as well as the teacher, are victims of war, and the classroom is located in an internally displaced person (IDP) camp.

“How would a mother feel if her son was beaten to the point of bleeding?” said Daw Ni Ni Aye, the mother of detained Kyaukseik villager Ko Nyi Nyi Aung.

“It was very difficult to study religious literature because I lacked basic education in secular education. I had to pass this journey with much patience and suffering to overcome all the challenges,” she said.

During the third wave of Covid-19, average folk at the grassroots level have struggled to secure reliable employment, presenting a direct challenge to many families’ livelihoods. It is one of the factors pushing children from poor families to take to the streets to beg.

A man who collects plastic bottles was arrested by the military in Kyauktaw, and his body was dismembered and dumped in a polythene bag. The corpse was so disfigured that he was scarcely recognizable. A tattoo of the name Su Hlaing Win, his beloved daughter, was still visible on his severed arm, a tragic way to have to identify a body. 

Soldiers abducted 18 people from Tinmagyi and Tinma (new) village in Kyauktaw Township on March 13 and 16, villagers have said, and continue to say.

A woman from the Sinbawkaing camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Arakan State’s Mrauk-U Township, which has a population of about 4,000, tested positive for Covid-19 on July 14. The same day, the entire IDP camp was locked down and traffic was restricted. 

Generally, pallbearing has been considered the domain of male volunteers among the various “free funeral service” associations across Myanmar. But a group of young women in Sittwe are playing an integral part in the free funeral and social welfare services offered in the Arakan State capital.

“My wife told me that she did not have her two legs. My second son told me, crying, that he’d lost his legs. My third son is dead,” Ko Oo Maung said of the tragedy that befell his family on April 4, 2021. 

“I miss my father and my mother. I am so sad as I cannot stay together with my parents,” she said with evident grief. 

From birth onward, the natural progression to old age, sickness, and death is one of the things that most will inevitably experience. We strive to experience the essence of happiness as we struggle to live a higher standard of life before we die.

They were killed after entering a forest situated east of Min Ywar village to look for firewood in March 2020, during a period of intense fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army (AA) in northern Arakan State.

As soon as I entered the village, I saw green trees and grass growing, their verdance due to the fact that it was the rainy season. I also observed burnt corrugated iron roofs and fire-ravaged, leafless trees, as well as blackened stumps.

Daw Ma Than Shwe suffers from hypertension, which at its worst can result in temporary unconsciousness for the septuagenarian. She cannot afford to go to the local health clinic, however, and instead has to rely on medicines from mom-and-pop drug stores.

The Kaladan River is a place full of memories and longing for Ma Su Chay. The memory of her husband’s severed body parts washed up along the banks of the river will not soon leave her, in a world that is so different — marked by added hardship and sadness — than it was a year ago.