Photos and text by Valeria Mongelli
After her neighbors were wounded in the airstrikes that hit her village in Kayah State, Htay Mo, 26, began to fear for her safety. She left her home and fled across the jungle to bring her disabled son to the relative safety of Daw Noe Ku camp near the border with Thailand. She was assigned a small hut with a modest entranceway, where she lives with her mother and her son. They mostly survive on donations. Her son’s favourite company is a rooster kept on a leash.
Kayah State, in Myanmar’s east, is home to the Karenni, a predominantly Christian ethnic minority. A strategically important region on the border with Thailand, Kayah State has seen “the longest episode of sustained, relatively high-intensity combat since Myanma’s post-coup war began”, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Daw Noe Ku camp, to which Htay Mo fled with her son, has a college, a high school, a basic medical clinic, and a church. It is a glimpse of temporary tranquillity among the atrocities of war. These photographs were made in September 2022 while the camp’s residents were preparing for a Karenni festival. The camp administration provided bags of rice, with which people prepared triangular snacks of sticky rice symbolizing unity.
When in February 2021 a military junta overthrew the elected government of Myanmar and seized power, a ceasefire that had existed since 2012 between the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) and the military was shattered. Fighting erupted once again, with a new generation of Karenni opposed to the coup forming their own armed groups to fight alongside the KNPP.
Observers say the conflict in Myanmar has reached a turning point, as a series of coordinated attacks by anti-military insurgents has inflicted serious losses on the junta since October 2023. Karenni resistance forces joined the offensive, with multiple attacks on junta positions including an assault on Kayah State capital Loikaw.
According to the UNHCR, around 100,000 people have been internally displaced in Kayah State and over two million nationwide. A recent United Nations (UN) investigation reported that Myanmar’s military junta has committed systematic human rights violations amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In July 2023, the military found and bombed Daw Noe Ku camp. Various buildings including the college were destroyed. This temporary haven was drawn into the theatre of war, and the Karenni people had to once again rebuild their homes.
Valeria Mongelli is a freelance photojournalist. She works as a stringer for Bloomberg, AFP, Andalou Agency and is a Hans Lucas photo agency member. She is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand.
Mongelli’s work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País among others. In 2021, two of Mongelli’s photos were nominated by AP for the Pulitzer Prize.
Mongelli’s documentary work focuses on migration and inequality. Women are often at the center of her stories.
