Burmese Ethnic Minorities

Living with 70 years of conflicts, persecution and discrimination, most ethnic groups have established strong armed groups, parallel administrations, schools and health centres in areas that are under their full control along the Thai border (Karen and Shan), Indian border (Chin) and Chinese border (Kachin).

Myanmar is infamously known for being one of the world's longest lasting armed ethnic conflict. Shortly after independence in 1948, ethnic conflicts have erupted between the Bamar dominated military government and diverse ethnic armed groups in minority States of the country. These conflicts have been part of the social landscape and created a multitude of distress through generations of minorities. Nearly 500,000 minority people live in camps for internally displaced persons, many more have fled the country and are refugees. Despite the arrival of a democratically elected government in 2015, led by Aung San Suu Kyi and the military, and hope for peace and lasting cease-fires with armed groups, the opposite has happened. Never before has the intensity of the conflicts, the number of displaced, refugees, civilian victims, war crimes and ethnic cleansing been so high as between 2015 and 2020 in all ethnic majority States of Rakhine, Kachin, Shan and Karen with, as pinnacle, the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign, later qualified as genocide, against the Rohingya in 2017. All conflict zones are tightly quarantined from the international community, NGOs and journalists, making access extremely difficult and severely hampering much needed humanitarian aid. The conflict in Rakhine State between the military and the Arakan Army has escalated to a full-fledged war between 2019 and 2020 with more than 250,000 displaced.

Since the military coup of 1 February 2021, the situation has turned into a generalised civil war in all corners of the country. Since the coup, ordinary Burmese people have also taken up arms and joined ethnic minority armies in order to overthrow the military dictatorship.

There are, to date, well over one million internally displaced, many more refugee in neighbouring countries and all-over air strikes targeting resistance groups and civilians indistinctively.

Since mid-2022, on several trips to Chin and Kayin states, I have been able to document the increasingly dangerous situation in which civilians find themselves.

David Verberckt 2023