The video footage is hard to watch. The last week has seen a barrage of media footage from Mizzima, BBC, Sky News and DW showing harrowing scenes of children running or crouched in terror as Myanmar fighter jets and helicopters bomb civilians in this never-ending civil war.
This media footage from local and foreign media houses will likely shock people into the realization that not only is the Myanmar military targeting civilians – people they have pledged to protect – but that many of them are children and that even schools are targets in this awful war.
In part due to these media stories, it is becoming clearer how Myanmar’s civil war is taking a serious toll on children. Over the weeks and months, Mizzima and other independent news outlets have been tallying the cost to children in lives and in terms of their mental state. The crisis has received little in-depth coverage by international media but breaking the silence Sky News, BBC and DW have just run documentaries that will help their audience assess the bitter toll the Myanmar junta is causing in its war on the people.
Highlighted are the harrowing scenes of children under threat, cowering in holes in the ground, or on the floor in their schools.
Last week Mizzima reported that students at schools in Chin State’s Mindat Township, under the National Unity Government’s (NUG) Board of Education are being taught in trenches because of the risk of junta airstrikes. The children are also being given bomb awareness training by their teachers, who are all taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), and local defence forces are teaching the children how to flee and hide if they are caught up in a junta airstrike. An official of the NUG’s Mindat Board of Education said that the NUG has requested that schools dig trenches to shelter from bombs. The teachers are giving the children bomb awareness training in accordance with NUG guidelines and local defence force comes to teach the children how to run and hide when they hear jet fighters.
Children are targets. He said not only does the junta launch airstrikes and fire artillery into villages, it also targets religious buildings and sites, medical facilities and schools in the same way, which is why children need to be taught to protect themselves in the case of artillery attacks or airstrikes. One of the teachers from Mindat said attacking students with artillery and aircraft was genocide. CDF Mindat has issued a statement advising people to dig trenches where they can safely shelter from junta airstrikes and artillery attacks. As we have reported, UNICEF has warned that women and children in particular are under threat from the fighting, because they are forced to flee their homes, and due to poverty and not having enough to eat.
Local independent media houses such as Mizzima, DVB and Irrawaddy inform a local and international audience week by week, month by month of the threats posed to civilians. But the documentaries run by international media organizations recently help to show the grotesque nature of the Myanmar junta’s war on their people and how children live in fear.
