At around 2pm on Monday, four men entered India secretly after a two-day journey — first on foot and later in a van — from Myanmar’s Hakha province to Zohkhawthar, a village in Mizoram along the Indo-Myanmar border.
Sometime last week, the four enlisted Myanmar army men had donated their weapons to the civilian rebel forces, thrown off their uniforms, and deserted the military. Thara Soe(26), Soe Aung(30), Thiha Kyaw(26) and Tin Ko Ko Kwin(30) are not the first Myanmarese soldiers to enter India along the border in Mizoram. But the case of these four men is different from the nearly 800 Myanmar soldiers who entered India at different times over the last year and surrendered at the police stations here. Unlike the four, the others were not deserters, but used the porous Indo-Myanmar border to flee to India for safety after being surrounded by rebel forces. They were later sent back to Myanmar from the international border in Moreh(Manipur) .
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These four men claim they have voluntarily deserted the army and now want to live in India until the civil war ends in Myanmar. The four, who checked in to a refugee camp in Champhai, Mizoram on Monday evening, spoke to HT, sharing details of their escape from Myanmar.
“We were posted in Hakha where fighting is intense now. This is one of the places where the army and People’s Defence Forces are still trying to take control of the town. Last month, 15 soldiers were killed. We are from the same batch and enlisted in the army last year. Joining military for men between 18 and 35 is mandatory.We lasted four months,” Khant Thara Soe said.
While it costs nearly 1,200,000 Myanmar Kyat(nearly ₹50,000) to book a van from Hakha to the Indian border village, the four did not have to pay a penny. “We were rewarded for donating our weapons and voluntarily leaving the army. The PDF are helping Myanmarese refugees enter India by arranging vans and even motorcycles. While the men are advised to stay back and join the civilian rebel forces, they help the women enter India,” the second soldier, Thiha Kyaw said.
The civil war in Myanmar is raging in different parts of the country; the four said they were witnesses to the battles fought between army and rebel forces in the areas surrounding Hakha, Falam, and Thantling. The men said they have survived death twice in the past two weeks.
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“Three days before we fled Myanmar, one of our colleagues, a 24-year-old, died in a gunfight with the rebel forces. We were patrolling a stretch between Hakha and Thantlang. We were in the same team and were forced to fight against the people’s forces. The people’s forces outnumbered us that day. Our colleague, who too had joined the army because he had no option lost his life. He was shot dead in the fight. We escaped ,” Soe Aung(30) said.
A week before this incident, Aung survived a mine attack. “Mines have been dug by both army and rebel forces in the outskirts of the city. Both groups are trying to take control of different areas in Hakha. It is an important city. While I survived the attack, two of my colleagues were injured. Our seniors left us to fend for ourselves. After completing seven months’ training, we were in the army for four months and were troubled by such incidents,” Aung added.
The men said in places such as Hakha and Thantlang, there is a bombing almost every two days, by the junta.
“The town of Thantlang is flattened. We have served there and saw the horrors of the war. It is like a ghost town. It has been flattened by aerial bombing. People have fled to different parts of the country and even Mizoram. We only wish the fighting ends soon and people can return to their homes,” Khant Thura Soe said.
Soe confirmed that in response to military junta’s aerial bombing, the civilian rebel forces are using drones loaded with explosives to target military bases.
During their seven-month training, the four men were taught ways to detect drone carrying bombs and how to deflect them.
“ Before leaving Myanmar, we shared all the learnings with our people. They can use it to fight the military junta. We shared all details of the army’s position at the places we were posted, and the deployment strength on the ground that we were aware of before coming to India,” added Soe.
The four added that the rebels asked the four if they wished to fight for them. “We asked for time because we have seen a lot of blood in the last three months,” Thiha Kyaw said, adding that their priority is to bring their families to India.
“All of us have left our families back home. There was no option of resigning. We would have been jailed for even asking to leave the army. For now, we are safe and will return only when the fighting in Myanmar is over. This is just temporary,” he added.
The four men will now live in the relief camp with over 900 other refugees from Myanmar. Over the last three years, after the 2021 military coup, around 30,000 Myanmar nationals have entered India and are living in Mizoram. But most agencies working on the ground say the actual number is twice or thrice that.
Security agencies believe the large influx of refugees in the northeastern state could be a potential internal security problem for India in coming years. The Union home ministry has started work to build a border fence along the India Myanmar border to stop the infiltration, but this is a project, which could take years. The Mizoram state government has welcomed the refugees and provided relief by coordinating with Mizoram’s prominent civil society organisations. The refugees have also found work, or started small businesses. Hundreds of refugee children now go to schools in Mizoram.
On Tuesday morning, this correspondent visited the refugee camp again. Of the four, one wasn’t there. Soe Aung had left the camp at 7 in the morning.
He had found work as a carpenter.