Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
My Socot, Thailand Inside an old wooden house in the Thai border town of May Sut, the wounded revolutionary fighters lies side by side.
Many of the missing bits in the legs, hands and arms. Some suffer from serious head wounds, and others have suffered from spine injuries. Some are blind, others are unable to walk.
These young fighters were wounded by landmines, rocket -made grenades (RPG) and snipers, burned by the flames of bombs that were broken by warplanes and scraped by shrapnel.
They traveled to this border town via the bush from the neighboring Myanmar, and they are looking for medical attention to the injuries that were exposed in an intense civil conflict, which is one of the longest and most fierce in the world.
However, the recovery location – the Sunshine Care Center – does not boast of the elegant sterile environment for the Hospital of White Walls equipped with advanced medical equipment and the qualified surgeons work.
Instead, fighters with 140 wounded in this center recover in primitive conditions, most of whom rest in a wooden and steel family arranged under a traditional Thai house.
They are taken care of by volunteers, who fled from Myanmar.
Unable to continue fighting, most of them can return home for fear of violent revenge by the Myanmar army, who were resisting their coup for four years.
On February 1, 2021, the army removed the democratically elected government in Aung San Suu Ki, which ignited an unprecedented uprising against military rule in a nation of 54 million people.
The coup – and the violent campaign against the peaceful protests that followed – said that the Myanmarz generation, the demographic of young people born between 1997 and 2012, pushed weapons.
This generation went to the bush and highlands to join the ethnic armed groups and the newly composed civilian defense militias – known as the Popular Defense Forces (PDF) – as well as participating in support roles such as wounded fighters.
One of those who joined the battle was Ko Khanat, 23, who was his hand in the wrist and lost sight in his left eye when the uncomplicated RPG missile launched by the military forces in his hands.
The resistance fighters often collect bombs and missiles that fail to bomb because their forces lack adequate weapons and ammunition, although the island on this occasion exploded the missile, causing serious injuries.
“When RPG decreased from the (military) side, I went to receive it, and just exploded,” he said. “Sometimes when RPG decreases, they do not explode. My wrist was wounded and my eyes were wounded.”
Before the military acquisition, Ko was a chef in the largest city in Myanmar, Yangon, specialized in European cuisine. After joining the pro -democracy protests in the streets and the experience of the violent military campaign, he fled to Karen, on the border with Thailand, to join PDF fighters.
He received some training and soon found himself on the front lines, where, in January 2022, he was injured, and became partial disabled.
After it was smuggled across the border and was treated in Thai hospitals, Ko Khanat came to the Sunshine Care Center for restoration, and now helps to manage the center’s daily activities.
He offered him an artificial hand during healing, but he refused, and he told Al -Jazeera that there was another amputation in a greater need.
“There are people in need, more than me,” he said.
“I don’t feel that I have no hand.”
