Maung Lu Hmwe — A Family Story from the Revolution
MoeMaKa, January 19, 2026
Maung Lu Hmwe once made his way to a displacement camp in a remote area where transportation was extremely difficult. Although people close to him had told him about this little camp before, this was his first time visiting it in person.
The journey was rough, but when he finally arrived, he found the camp peaceful and well organized. As the saying goes, even amid the worst of circumstances, something good can still be found.
“Long rows of huts,
A home beside the stream,
To this peaceful refuge
I came so long ago.The flames of war
We once endured—
My little child remains within my heart.
I still remember,
Though now it seems
A world away.”
A young man working as a teacher at the displacement camp showed Maung Lu Hmwe two or three poems he had written. The poem above was one of them.
The young man was originally from Yangon and had married a woman from the countryside. When they were newly married, they lived in Yangon.
After the military seized power, he joined demonstrations on the streets of Yangon. When the military began arresting protesters, he and his family fled to his wife’s village.
“Things actually became even worse after we fled to my wife’s village, Saya,” he told Maung Lu Hmwe.
His wife’s village eventually became known locally as a stronghold of the Pyu Saw Htee militia.
Around three years ago, fighting broke out between resistance forces and Pyu Saw Htee members in the village. Resistance forces evacuated civilians from the village into resistance-controlled territory.
But by an unfortunate coincidence, the couple’s two-year-old son had been taken that night by relatives living in the northern part of the village to sleep at their house.
Resistance forces were positioned in the southern part of the village. Military and Pyu Saw Htee forces were in the north.
Gunfire erupted between the two sides.
“I tried to go and get my son,” the young man recalled. “Bullets were whizzing everywhere, and fires had already started. I had no choice but to turn back.”
Today, both husband and wife work as teachers at the displacement camp.
Because of the pain of leaving their son behind, they initially decided not to have another child.
Later, after repeated encouragement from people around them, they reconsidered. By the time Maung Lu Hmwe met them, the young man’s wife was in the final stage of pregnancy.
“My son is nearly six now,” he said.
“If another ten years pass and things are still like this, my son could become an armed Pyu Saw Htee member. Even if he met me, he might not know that I’m his father.
“He might shoot me.”
He shared these thoughts with Maung Lu Hmwe.
The young man had previously worked for a company in Yangon and was worldly and capable. If he wanted to, he could probably choose somewhere more comfortable to live than this remote displacement camp.
For now, however, he said he had chosen to remain there with people who shared the same circumstances, helping educate the children.
“The only thing I know about the son we left behind is that he’s still alive. Other than that, we have no contact with him at all.
“Now I’m about to have another child. If the revolution still hasn’t ended by the time this child grows up, the two brothers could end up on opposite sides of a battle, shooting at each other.”
The son they had left behind continued to dominate the thoughts of both husband and wife.
The young teacher loved literature, but there were no books to read at the camp.
There was no internet.
There was no mobile-phone service.
There was not even a single motorcycle in the entire camp.
Their little camp was an isolated place, cut off from the communications networks of the outside world.
And there, in that isolated place, the young schoolteacher and his wife lived with the constant longing for the little boy they had left behind in the village.
“The flames of war
We once endured—
My little child remains within my heart.
I still remember,
Though now it seems
A world away.”
Maung Lu Hmwe could find no words that might comfort the couple.
All he could do was quietly wish that one day, the young teacher and his wife would be reunited safely with the son they had been forced to leave behind.