More than a week after the devastating earthquake in Myanmar, the stench of death still poisons the air in the northern Mingun town, a few miles from the epicentre.
A Buddhist monk who goes by the name of Monk Owen and who was until recently the principal of Mingun’s school, tells The Independent: “The situation is very bad… Many in the community have been killed, many injured, and we have had no help from outside.”
Many of the town’s religious buildings have been reduced to rubble and matchwood. Photos show monks and others injured during the quake lying in the open, wearing bandages and being cared for by monks. More than 3,500 people have been killed across the country by the 7.7 magnitude tremor.
Foreign aid teams cannot penetrate here. The only organised rescue work has been undertaken by fighters of the People’s Defence Force (PDF), one of the many militias that have sprung up since Myanmar’s military coup of February 2021, contesting the army’s right to rule.
“They are young men, many of them came from the cities,” Owen says ‘Many of them were my students in secret classes where I taught them about democracy and human rights. They don’t have the tools to cut through concrete.’ In the 40C heat, the smell of decay is inescapable.
Elsewhere in Myanmar the heavy-duty machines of international aid teams have hacked through the rubble to bring out the bodies after . But in Mingun as in much of the rest of Sagaing region, west of the city of Mandalay, the quake struck at the heart of a warzone.
The army is present in Mingun and elsewhere in the locality but confined to camps which they rarely leave because the hearts and minds of the community are with the PDF. But there are army road blocks on the roads out of town, so residents are bottled up in their own villages. “People injured in the earthquake cannot travel to the hospitals in the cities because they fear getting arrested or killed at the road blocks,” Owen said.
Mingun is famous for its vast “unfinished pagoda”, the huge stump of an 18th century stupa intended to be the biggest in the world. Its construction was halted when King Bodawpaya, who had commissioned it, was told by an astrologer that he would die when it was completed. It has long been a draw to foreign visitors who flocked across the Irrawaddy river from Mandalay by boat to admire it, Today soldiers are camped beside the mighty monument, barring access.
Mingun has been embroiled in the civil war for years now. “The houses of the people have been destroyed in air raids,” says Owen. ‘They have been living in the temples and monasteries – but those were knocked down in the earthquake, so now they are living in the forests. They forage for food but can’t risk cooking it lest the smoke of their fires is spotted by the military and they bomb again.’
After coming out in opposition to the military coup, Owen became a wanted man and in 2022 Mingun was targeted in air strikes that levelled the area.
In October 2024, he grew his hair long, bribed police to provide him with false documents and fled the country. He is now seeking asylum in France. Subsequently, Owen says three of his close relatives were shot dead by soldiers.
“Aung San Suu Kyi [the leader deposed and imprisoned by the military junta] is our idol, we trust her one hundred per cent, she has been working for the good of all Burmese people whatever their religion,” Owen says. “But she is under the military’s control now.”
“The generals claim to be Buddhists but they are killers,” he adds. “They are just using Buddhism to get influence over people. But now they’ve lost the support of everyone. I believe they will soon flee to Russia – either that or they will end up dead like [Libya’s Muammar] Gaddafi.”
