The news of the military coup in Myanmar and the turmoil there is very worrying in itself. However, when I heard about it, the first thing I thought about was the children. Particularly the children who have been recruited into the orphanage industry – ‘orphanages’ run for profit, something that has boomed in the country, over the past decade. What is going to happen to them?
In 2015, I visited Myanmar. I was invited to provide support, but it turned out that the only support they were looking for was money. I was shown around several ‘orphanages’ near Yangon. All of the people running them had wonderful stories of self-sacrifice and giving the children better opportunities in life. This was a thin veneer, however. It was clear that the children had all been taken from their families, brought to the city from very remote areas, that they were given a roof over their head, an opportunity to attend school and very little else. The expectation was also very clear, surely a ‘rich’ white foreigner would want to provide financial support to these ‘poor children’ and ‘self-sacrificing adults’. My ‘unwillingness to understand’ this was not appreciated.
These are the children I keep thinking about when I hear the news about Myanmar. And I know that there are thousands more there in the same situation. As the country closes again and the coveted foreign donations stop, as there is likely to be a new crackdown on minority religions – to which all the people running the ‘orphanages’ I visited belonged – what is going to happen to the children? Is anyone going to bother to arrange for them to make the long, complicated, and expensive journey back to their families? Or are they simply going to be abandoned and left to fend for themselves as the people running the ‘orphanages’ try to save their own skin?
And if the country closes down completely again, will we ever find out? Will there be anything we can do to offer protection to these children?
I have no answers, only questions. They are stuck in my mind.
If a new military dictatorship is established, it will be devastating to all people in Myanmar. However, it will have the greatest impact on the children. Both those who have gotten stuck in the orphanage industry and other children who live in vulnerable situations. With everyone trying to survive from day to day, who will look out for them?
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