Japanese group strives to aid displaced Myanmar people

Misaki Otsuki can never forget her encounter last summer with a Myanmar boy who evacuated to a camp in Thailand due to Myanmar military airstrikes on anti-junta forces in border areas.

The boy was crying during a prayer at a school for displaced Myanmar children in Mae Sot, a Thai town that borders Myanmar’s Kayin State. Some other children were also crying, apparently traumatized as they could not see their parents or had seen them killed in three years of conflict since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup in the country.

“The boy said he did not know how long he will have to stay at the camp, and that he wants to live with his parents in Kayin again,” said Otsuki, a Myanmar resident of Japan who wishes to be identified by her Japanese name. “I just wanted to hold him tight and say, ‘Mom is here. You are OK now.'”