Myanmar’s military has been fighting various ethnic armed groups for decades. Since the 2021 military coup, new anti-military junta armed groups have joined the conflict, often forming loose alliances with ethnic forces. In the face of growing resistance and territorial losses, the junta has ramped up its “scorched earth” tactics against civilians, resulting in attacks on villages, killings, sexual violence, and arson. More than 70,000 people have been killed since the coup, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
During the current fighting, the junta’s use of antipersonnel landmines – banned weapons that indiscriminately kill and injure long after they’ve been placed – has surged. Several non-state armed groups have also been using antipersonnel mines.
Myanmar topped the global list of landmine casualties for the first time in 2023, according to the latest Landmine Monitor report, with 1,003 reported civilian deaths and injuries – almost three times the previous year. The actual numbers are likely much higher. In the first six months of 2024, 692 casualties were recorded, about a third of them children. Myanmar is one of only four states – along with Russia, Iran, and North Korea – actively using antipersonnel mines over the past year.
The three stories below are from people who survived antipersonnel mine explosions but whose lives have been irreparably harmed.
Daw Khin
Daw Khin, 57, stepped on an antipersonnel mine planted at her home on September 29, 2022.
She had just returned to her village in Demoso township in eastern Karenni State, also known as Kayah, after fleeing military airstrikes in May 2021, more than a year earlier. Fighting broke out in the state months after the military coup in February that year. As the armed opposition grew, so too did military abuses, including aerial and artillery attacks that killed civilians and destroyed civilian structures. Junta military units planted landmines around houses and along pathways in villages emptied by airstrikes and fighting, both while positioned in the area and while withdrawing.
The military retreated from Daw Khin’s village. “I rushed to get back,” she said. “Many houses in the village were destroyed but my house was okay, only the roof was destroyed. There were bullet holes in the house. Twelve of them – I counted.”
Like many other villagers who returned, she slowly began repairing her home. Two days after she got back, while cleaning the outdoor toilet, she stepped on a landmine. “I didn’t think the military would lay mines in my house.”
Myanmar: Surging Landmine Use Claims Lives, Livelihoods
Highest Casualties Worldwide Since 2023
Daw Khin’s nephew and son-in-law heard the explosion and took her to the hospital. She was unconscious for three days and stayed in the hospital for two months of treatment. Doctors amputated her right leg at the thigh, her left leg below the knee, and one of her fingers. “I found out my legs were gone,” she said. “I was crying for weeks and so depressed. I asked my daughter so many questions, I didn’t remember anything.”
Daw Khin’s neighbor was also injured by a mine the following day. “[The military] laid mines in our village when they took up position there, but left the mines when they moved out,” she said. Although she never saw the mine near her toilet, she was told it was a bounding fragmentation mine.
Daw Khin had fled the airstrikes with her husband, who died from an illness in April 2022 while they lived in a camp for internally displaced people. After losing her legs, she moved in with her son and his family. “I’m still in pain,” she said. “I feel numbness all the time. It gets worse when it’s cold. I cry when I’m in pain. The leg that was cut from the thigh is the most painful.”
She went to the hospital twice for follow-up treatment but has been unable to return since fighting escalated in November 2023. “All resistance-controlled hospitals are too far, and I don’t have money for transport,” she said. “So I just take paracetamol,” a mild pain reliever.
She received a prosthetic limb in May 2023 but says she can’t use it because it doesn’t fit well or help with balance, given that she lost both legs. She has crutches but no wheelchair and said the area where she lives is inaccessible anyway. “I do nothing at home,” she said. “Some cleaning. I drag myself on the floor to mop it.”
U Win
U Win, 45, spent a year living in a makeshift displacement camp in Karenni State, with inadequate food, clean water, and medicine, after fleeing military airstrikes that destroyed his home.
In late February 2023, he decided to return to his farm in Nan Mei Khon village in Demoso township to try and forage for food. But early one morning, while hunting a rooster he had heard crowing, he stepped on an antipersonnel mine in an area he thought was safe.
“I only knew after I stepped on it,” he said. “My foot was blown away. I was bleeding and had to crawl back to a hut where my friend was.”
U Win’s lower left leg was amputated at Loikaw hospital. Three other landmine victims from his village were also brought for treatment shortly after he arrived, including a 14-year-old boy. Villagers told him they identified the mines as small plastic blast mines.
“The military planted landmines in the village, at entrances to big buildings and houses, to keep the resistance from staying there,” he said. They also planted mines en route to their camp. “In Karenni, we still have landmines in every village where the military was positioned.”
U Win received a prosthetic limb in September 2023 but has limited mobility due to ongoing pain, which he is unable to get medicine for. “I can’t walk or travel for long, it’s still painful,” he said. “I used to have a family – siblings and parents. But we’ve been separated by the fighting. Our house was destroyed.”
Like many survivors who worked in farming or other physical labor, U Win has been unable to return to his former livelihood. “Since I was injured, it’s been getting harder to survive,” he said. “I can’t work. I don’t have money or a job. The military destroyed everything.”
Abdullah
Abdullah, 40, stepped on an antipersonnel mine while fleeing his village of Auk (Let Thar), north of downtown Maungdaw, where hundreds of Rohingya Muslims were reportedly killed in early August 2024 by drone strikes and shelling.
In Myanmar’s western Rakhine State, fighting between the military and the ethnic Arakan Army has surged since November 2023, with both sides using landmines, as well as committing mass killings, arson, and unlawful recruitment against civilians.
“On August 9, the Arakan Army forcibly evicted us from our village, so we headed toward the Naf River to cross the border into Bangladesh,” Abdullah said. Four to five mines exploded that day, killing at least two Rohingya, he said. “The landmines were placed inside what looked like condensed milk cans, with sand and gravel piled on top. As soon as anything came near, they exploded. A landmine exploded beneath me and another villager as we walked along the main road.”
Abdullah lost consciousness due to blood loss while villagers helped get him to the river and ultimately in a boat to cross.
“When the landmine exploded, we all thought he was dead,” said a friend of Abdullah’s who was fleeing with him.
“Villagers collected money to rush me to Bangladesh as quickly as possible,” Abdullah said. He arrived in Bangladesh on August 13. “I believe I would have died if I had not been able to reach Bangladesh for one more day.”
Bangladesh border guard forces initially stopped Abdullah and his family but allowed them to enter when they saw the severity of his injury. His lower left leg was amputated at Chittagong Medical College Hospital, where he stayed for six weeks. Another Rohingya man who was injured in the same landmine explosion also lost his leg.
“Since July, we have observed a substantial increase in trauma cases, including gunshot wounds and blast injuries,” said a doctor at a hospital in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. “Some patients arrived with untreated wounds that had become infected, showing signs of sepsis or severe anemia due to blood loss. This suggests that many sustained their injuries days before reaching us.… Over a three-day period [in August], we treated around 50 new cases involving delayed, untreated wounds.… Several patients reported being caught in crossfire or injured in landmine explosions while fleeing violence.”
An estimated 40,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh in recent months, joining about one million refugees who fled earlier atrocities in Myanmar. As a recently arrived refugee, Abdullah has not been registered by Bangladesh authorities, preventing him from accessing ongoing support or even a rations card.
“You are seeing the outside wound, but the wound inside of the patient, that becomes a nightmare for these patients that they carry with them, which is a challenge for us to cure,” the doctor said.
