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Mutraw district, Myanmar – Paw Wah*, 36, was a child when she first experienced the brutality of Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw. When she was just 10 years old, soldiers came to her village and kidnapped her.
Paw Wah, who is a farmer, has lived all her life in Karen, a state in Myanmar’s southeastern reaches bordering Thailand, where walking distance through mountainous terrain and unrelenting jungle valleys is measured in days, not hours.
At her neighbour’s house in the tiny jungle hamlet of Nyah Beh Ki, a two-day hike inland from the Salween River which separates Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, from western Thailand, Paw Wah recalled the incident from when she was a girl.
“When I was 10, they arrested me and forced me and some other villagers to stay at their camp for 13 days,” she said. “At the time, my grandfather owned an elephant, and…
