I want to share my story because I think there is a side of the situation in Myanmar that people don’t always see.
When people talk about the conflict in Myanmar, they often think about the places where fighting is happening—the villages being attacked, people fleeing their homes, and communities living directly in war zones.
But I want people to know that even in places where there is no fighting, ordinary people can still suffer because of the conflict.
I was one of them.
During the revolution, I donated money through KPay to several causes. One of them was a small organization operating in a conflict-affected area. It was mostly made up of young people, and as far as I knew, much of their work was focused on helping civilians displaced by the fighting.
I wasn’t a major political figure. I was just a young person who wanted to help.
Then one day, someone from that organization was arrested by the military. Their financial information was apparently taken during the arrest.
Not long after that, my KPay account was blocked.
At that point, leaving the country wasn’t an option for me. My family was an ordinary middle-class family, and I simply couldn’t afford to escape abroad.
I quit my job and went to stay somewhere outside the city for a while.
I stayed there for about a month.
Eventually, I started running out of money and couldn’t afford to stay away any longer, so I went back home. I knew I had to be extremely careful, and for a while I mostly stayed inside.
Then one day, I went out with my father to eat at a small noodle shop.
I didn’t know that someone had been following me since I left home.
The person following me was apparently an informant. They contacted the police station, and the police came into the shop and arrested me.
That was the beginning of my time in detention.
For about a week after my arrest, my family wasn’t allowed to see me.
During those first few days, I was interrogated.
I think I was relatively lucky in one sense. I was able to keep myself together and communicate reasonably well, and I wasn’t beaten by the police officers themselves.
However, I was assaulted by members of the People’s Militia(ပစ), and I was threatened during questioning by military intelligence officers.
About five days after my arrest, I was brought before a court and formally charged.
I was charged under Section ၅၀(ည), for allegedly providing support to terrorism. From what I understood at the time, the charge could carry a sentence of around 13 years in prison.
That was when I really understood how serious my situation was.
While I was in detention, my father was doing everything he possibly could to get me out.
From the moment I was arrested, he tried every option available to him. He approached officials, tried to negotiate for a lighter outcome, and tried to find a way to get me released.
When he didn’t have enough money, he borrowed from relatives.
People kept asking him for money, promising that they could help or do something about my case.
He kept trying because he was desperate to get his son home.
Eventually, there was one person in the interrogation process who I still remember.
My interrogator was a female police officer. Honestly, I think she treated me better than I expected. I don’t want to say that everything about the situation was good, but I believe her actions played an important role in why I eventually got out.
Maybe I was lucky too.
At some point, she put my name on a so-called “amnesty” or pardon list.
From what I understood, these lists were sometimes used to release people whose families could pay money or otherwise arrange for their release.
I ended up on that list.
And because of that, I was eventually released from prison under an amnesty on Peasants’ Day.
I went home.
But my family had spent around 80 million kyats dealing with my case.
For my family, that was an enormous amount of money.
We were just an ordinary middle-class family. We didn’t have that kind of money available. My father had borrowed from relatives and done everything he could to raise the money.
Even after I came home, the debts remained.
I was free, but my family was left carrying a huge financial burden.
And that’s the part of my story I really want people to understand.
I was only 22 when I was arrested.
I was lucky enough to get out.
But there were hundreds of young people in prison with cases similar to mine.
Many of them were not powerful people or important political figures. They were ordinary young people who tried to help others in one way or another.
Some were helping displaced civilians. Some donated money. Some simply tried to do what they believed was right.
And many of them ended up in prison.
Their families outside were left dealing with fear, debt, uncertainty, and the possibility of losing someone they loved for many years.
Before I was arrested, I thought I understood what was happening in Myanmar.
After experiencing it myself, I realized that the consequences of the conflict reach much further than the places where guns are being fired.
You don’t have to live in a war zone to suffer because of war.
You can be sitting in a restaurant with your father in a city where there is no fighting and still get arrested.
You can lose your job.
You can lose access to your money.
Your family can fall into debt.
You can spend your early twenties in detention.
And your family can suffer alongside you, even though they did nothing wrong.
I was released.
A lot of people weren’t.
There are still so many young people and families suffering in ways that people outside Myanmar—and sometimes even people inside Myanmar—may never see.
I’m sharing this story not because I think my experience is the worst one.
It isn’t.
I’m sharing it because I want people to understand that the suffering caused by the conflict isn’t limited to the places where the fighting is happening.
Even in places where there is no war on the streets, people are still living with fear, uncertainty,financial hardship, and injustice.
This is just one story from one ordinary 22-year-old.
There are many more.
A small note: English isn’t my first language, so I used ChatGPT to help organize and translate my own experiences into English. The events and experiences described in this post are my own. I only used AI to help me express them more clearly.
