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‘Apocalypse’: Myanmar Doctor Describes Deadly Junta Airstrike on Mindat Hospital

May 9, 2024/in News

“Apocalypse” is how a doctor has described the scene when Myanmar junta fighter jets used four 500lb bombs to destroy a hospital in Chin State’s Mindat Township on April 25, killing five patients and injuring 15 others. Dr. Shao* was among anti-regime medics who helped run Wun Ma Thuu Hospital, which provided free treatment to civilians injured in junta […]

What is Transitional Justice (Cartoon Animation)

May 3, 2024/in Cartoon Animation

‘Apocalypse’: Myanmar Doctor Describes Deadly Junta Airstrike on Mindat Hospital

May 9, 2024/in News

What is Transitional Justice (Cartoon Animation)

May 3, 2024/in Cartoon Animation

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‘Apocalypse’: Myanmar Doctor Describes Deadly Junta Airstrike on Mindat Hospital

May 9, 2024/in News

Dr. Shao* was among anti-regime medics who helped run Wun Ma Thuu Hospital, which provided free treatment to civilians injured in junta attacks.

Residents of Mindat and neighboring Chin State townships, as well as nearby areas of Magwe and Sagaing regions, relied on the hospital before it was targeted by the junta.

Fighter jets intentionally bombed the hospital despite an absence of clashes in the township. Three days after the first airstrike, warplanes returned to bomb the hospital’s remaining buildings on April 28.

Intentionally attacking medical services during conflict is considered a war crime under international humanitarian law. A total of 343 hospitals and clinics have been destroyed in junta attacks, killing 104 health workers, according to an April 28 statement issued by the parallel civilian National Unity Government.

Dr. Shao formerly worked at Mandalay Public Hospital in the country’s second city but joined the CDM (civil disobedience movement) two days after the military ousted the elected civilian government on Feb. 1, 2021. Fleeing an arrest warrant issued because he refused to work for the junta, he took up his post at Wun Ma Thuu Hospital on Aug. 6, 2021.

On April 25, he was settling down after a routine day in the operating theater.

“That day, 25.04.2024, started like any other day. We performed surgery on a patient at 4.30 pm and finished the operation around 6 pm. After the surgery, my colleague and I walked back to our place which was a block away from the hospital down the hill. I was supposed to attend an online class, but I didn’t. I cooked our traditional fish-based rice noodle soup for tomorrow’s breakfast for all of us. Then I went to my room and watched a YouTube video to be relaxed.”

Flames engulf the hospital after the bombing raid. / CDF Mindat

He describes what happened next as “version two of the apocalypse”.

“I was chatting with my colleagues at about 7.50 pm when I heard a noise that I suddenly realized came from a jet fighter or a helicopter. Before I could warn my friends that we might be under air attack, a loud blast and red flash knocked me to the floor and the ceiling began to cave in. It was an airstrike for sure and my impulse was to run to the bomb shelter.”

However, he remembered that the military often strafes people with machine-gun fire after an airstrike.

“So I continued to crouch down in the room. As expected, I heard the sound of a machine gun being fired.

“After about a minute, I ran to the bomb shelter and yelled for everyone to get in. Two minutes after I got inside, the second bomb detonated. This time it was closer, shaking the ground so that the edges of the bomb shelter started to fall. We later found out that the blasts were so intense because they came from two bombs being dropped twice.”

The impact also caused oil barrels to explode, which started a fire.

“I was in a frenzy and I didn’t know what to do. Our house was on fire and we couldn’t retrieve any belongings from the blaze.”

Once the bombing raid was over, Dr. Shao and his colleagues rushed out to check the damage.

“We went to the hospital and found everything destroyed: the ceiling had collapsed, the floors were strewn with broken glass, and the building was on fire. We salvaged what we could from the operating theater, including instruments, medicines, and other stuff that was still in good condition. We tried to carry out as much stuff we could, but the fire became so strong that we had to give up at around 11.30 pm.”

Hospital staff also raced to save bedridden patients from the flames and smoke that were engulfing the wards.

“We wrapped immobile patients in soaking blankets and carried them out of the burning hospital.

My friend, nurses and I checked the patients to see who needed urgent medical attention.

The stable patients were then sent to houses in the village. We also transformed a village house into a makeshift hospital and temporary operating theater.”

Medical equipment and supplies lie amid the ruins of the bombed-out hospital. / Yaw Mang

Two patients were killed immediately in the bombing while another three succumbed to their injuries in the following days. Over 30 more were injured, 14 when the hospital ceiling collapsed from the blast impact.

“I was simultaneously furious and grief-stricken that patients who had come to be treated for their injuries had suffered worse injuries and even death here due to the inhumane action of intentionally dropping bombs on the hospital.”

Having rescued patients and equipment from the burning hospital, Dr, Shao and his team now had another urgent task at hand: saving the lives of people caught in the bombing.

“At 5.30 am, we needed to operate on a patient who had a stick penetrating his abdomen at the civilian house in the village. We had to arrange a row of chairs to form a makeshift operating table.”

An hour later, exhausted after completing the operation successfully, he was lying down for a nap when the warning of another air raid sounded. He rushed to the bomb shelter but only managed to get an hour’s rest due to the crowded conditions.

“Throughout the whole day, we were in and out of the bomb shelter due to a jet fighter and military airplane hovering above our heads.”

After undergoing surgery in the makeshift hospital, patients were sent back to houses in the village.

The next day, patients who could be moved were evacuated to neighboring villages over concern of more bombing raids.

“I didn’t have time to cry because I was shaking with fear,” Dr. Shao said. “That’s why I describe what I experienced on that day as a second apocalypse.”

Dr. Shao is a pseudonym used at the request of the doctor concerned for his security.

Irrawaddy News

What is Transitional Justice (Cartoon Animation)

May 3, 2024/in Cartoon Animation

“အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေးဆိုင်ရာတရားမျှတမှုဆိုတာ (What is Transitional Justice) ” ကို ND-Burma မှ Animation အနေဖြင့် ယနေ့ ထုတ်ပြန်လိုက်သည်။
အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေးဆိုင်ရာတရားမျှတမှုဆိုတာ (What is Transitional Justice)-
အာဏာရှင်စနစ်မှ ဒီမိုကရေစီသို့ ကူးပြောင်းရာ တွင်လည်းကောင်း၊ ပြည်တွင်းစစ်ပဋိပက္ခများချုပ်ငြိမ်း၍ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး ဖြစ်စဉ်သို့ကူးပြောင်းရာတွင်လည်းကောင်း၊ ခွဲခြားဖိနှိပ်သည့် စနစ်မှ ခွဲခြားမှုကင်းမဲ့ပြီး ဒီမိုကရေစီနှင့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ရှိသည့် စနစ်သို့ကူးပြောင်းရာတွင် လည်းကောင်း အတိတ်ကာလတွင် နေရာအနှံ့ စနစ်တကျ ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိကျူးလွန်းခဲ့သော လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှု ဖြစ်စဉ်များအား ပြန်လည်ဖော်ထုတ်
မှတ်တမ်းတင်ပြီး ထိခိုက်နစ်နာ ခံစားခဲ့ရသူများအတွက် တရားမျှတမှု ရရှိအောင်ကိုင်တွယ်ဖြေရှင်းသည့် လုပ်ငန်းစဉ်ဖြစ်သည်။
အဓိက ရည်ရွယ်ချက်မှာ – လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများအတွက် –
အမှန်တရားပေါ်ပေါက်ရေး(Truth)၊ တရားမျှတမှုဖော်ဆောင်ရေး (Justice)၊ ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာမြှင့်တင်ရေး Dignity၊ ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျော်ရေး (Reparation)၊ ပြစ်ဒဏ်ပေးခံရခြင်းမှကင်းလွတ်နေသည့် ဓလေ့အား ဆန့်ကျင်တိုက်ဖျက်ရေး နှင့် နောက်နောင်တွင်ထပ်မံမဖြစ်ပေါ်ရေး အတွက် ရည်ရွယ် ဆောင်ရွက်ပါသည်။
အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေးဆိုင်ရာလုပ်ငန်းစဉ်များအနေဖြင့် – ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်သူများကို တရားစွဲဆိုအပြစ်ပေးရေးလုပ်ငန်းစဉ် (Justice)၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှုများ ကိုစုံစမ်းဖော်ထုတ်၍အမှန်တရားပေါ်ပေါက်ရေး လုပ်ငန်းစဉ် (Truth)၊ နစ်နာသူများအား ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျှော်ရေးနှင့် ဂုဏ်ပြုပေးခြင်း လုပ်ငန်းစဉ် (Reparation) နှင့် နောက်နောင်ထပ်မံ
မဖြစ်ပွားစေရေးအတွက် အာမခံရန် အခြေခံဥပဒေအပါအဝင် ဥပဒေများ၊
အဖွဲ့အစည်းများအား ပြင်ဆင် ပြောင်းလဲခြင်း (Institution Reform) လုပ်ငန်းတို့အားဆောင်ရွက်ကြသည်။

Spring Revolution

Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 8 to 14, 2024)September 20, 2024 - 2:30 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 8 to 14, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Magway Region, Shan State, Kachin State, and Rakhine State from September 8th to 14th. Military Junta arrested the civilians as human shields from Mindon Township, Magway Region, and Salingyi Township, […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 1 to 7, 2024)September 13, 2024 - 5:08 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 1 to 7, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, Magway Region, and Shan State from September 1st to 7th. The Military Junta threatened that they would launch airstrikes on the townships which they lost. The […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (Aug 22 to 31, 2024)September 7, 2024 - 4:09 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Aug 22 to 31, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Magway Region, Bago Region, Mandalay Region, Tanintharyi Region, and Shan State from August 22nd to 31st. Head of Prison which works under Military Junta, tortured and blackmailed the […]

Multimedia

What is the Truth (Cartoon Animation)May 31, 2024 - 4:58 pm
What is Transitional Justice (Cartoon Animation)May 3, 2024 - 8:38 am
Close the SkyApril 11, 2024 - 7:45 am
Forced MarriageJanuary 9, 2024 - 2:12 pm

ND Burma

ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.

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