The five young doctors took up their mission together: defying Myanmar’s junta to treat the wounded through the coup and deadly military crackdown four years ago. Since then, each continued supporting the democratic cause.
For Dr. Min, 32, that meant fleeing to the jungle to offer battlefield triage to rebel forces who were fighting the army. But when the earthquake last week devastated his home city, Mandalay, he knew he had to cross combat zones to check on his family and help his friend group of doctors again.
“I prayed the whole way back,” he said.
Dr. Min returned in time to watch his four friends’ bodies being pulled from the rubble of a 12-story condominium, the stench of mass death simmering in the tropical heat.
It’s a measure of Myanmar’s collapse that the generals have come to see health care providers as enemies of the state. The junta has closed at least seven private hospitals in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, that were seen as sympathetic to the resistance. It has jailed doctors and nurses.
Nevertheless, Dr. Min joined a group of medical volunteers and rushed to the stricken city. Residents were clawing through the debris with bare hands, spurred by the cries and then the whispers of the trapped. Eventually, the sounds ceased. One day, a mother and her 4-month old daughter were pulled out alive. Dr. Min administered first aid. The baby died.
At the 12-story condo, there were only bodies, Dr. Min said, including the four friends who had joined him in defying the coup.
“It was heartbreaking to see them on stretchers, not breathing,” he said.
Before the coup, Dr. Min, who is being identified by part of his name for his security, led a normal life. His girlfriend was a nurse. He drove a Honda hatchback and vacationed at a beach in Thailand. Influenced by his father, a math teacher who listened secretly to BBC radio during an earlier era of military rule, Dr. Min supported the democratic opposition, which won elections in 2015 and 2020.
“I was really happy back then,” he said.
In February 2021, the military jailed Myanmar’s elected leaders. Dr. Min joined peaceful protests that sent hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. The junta responded by unleashing snipers. The public hospital Dr. Min worked for refused to send ambulances to collect the casualties. So he joined a civil disobedience movement, which saw trash collectors, auditors and doctors alike boycotting the new military regime.
Dr. Min and his friends began treating civilians targeted by the junta. There were many single gunshot wounds, all to the head, some in children, he said. Once, Dr. Min helped an old woman into a private ambulance with flashing lights, only for soldiers to strafe the van with gunfire.
After the protests, Dr. Min escaped to a jungle where professionals like him — lawyers, accountants, doctors — formed an armed struggle against the junta. He learned how to sleep with the noise of night insects and how to dig a latrine. The unit started with 80 soldiers. It has lost about 20 on the battlefield.
When the earthquake struck, rebel groups had been advancing against the military, which has fortified the big cities, Mandalay included. Despite pleading for international assistance with the quake damage, the junta has siphoned off supplies to the capital, Naypyidaw, and set up roadblocks to prevent volunteers from entering towns and more remote areas.
“The military junta is once again using a humanitarian crisis to assert its authority at the cost of thousands of lives,” said Charles Santiago, the co-chair of a Southeast Asian collective of lawmakers dedicated to human rights.
There is little chance that anyone is still alive in the wreckage of Mandalay, although one man was rescued after five days. Disease now threatens. Unnerved by aftershocks and unable to return to their destroyed homes, residents are sleeping where they can, in the shadow of the city’s tiered palace or in open fields. The junta’s soldiers occasionally kick them out, forcing them to find new shelter. Food and water are running low.
“The junta cares more about shutting down hospitals and blocking doctors than saving lives after the earthquake,” Dr. Min said. “They are not acting like humans.”
After watching more bodies emerge from the rubble, Dr. Min took a break. There were, he feared, no more lives to save.
He passed buildings listing at strange angles. He avoided the growing piles of trash, walking down a familiar lane toward his family home.
It was still standing. His family spilled out to greet him. Everyone was alive. He held them close, the strain of the last four years overwhelming him. They talked, although it was impossible to say everything or even much of anything.
Then Dr. Min left home again.
