It was a bright and sunny day in February this year, and Liani was cooking in the kitchen when she heard a loud sound go off – the junta had dropped a bomb in her village in the Matupi township in Chin State. Before she knew it, the explosion had reached her, and shrapnel tore through her foot. She lost her right leg from the thigh down.
On October 28, Liani was wheeled into the Adventist Hospital in Aizawl at 8:40 am by two of her sons. She had come for an operation to remove the fragments still lodged in her left foot. With faded nail paint on her fingers, she pointed towards the indents caused by bomb shrapnel on her leg as she narrated her story.
When war came to Chin State
Before 2021, Liani and her husband were farmers. Like many people in the town, they lived off their land. According to the Institute of Chin Affairs (ICA), military attacks hit Chin State on May 14, 2021, just three months after the military seized power on February 1 that year. The ICA is a non-profit organisation that supports the Chin people through humanitarian aid, research, and advocacy.
Chin State lies along Mizoram’s border, in the western Myanmar hills. It is one of the regions where armed resistance to the military has been strongest since the February 2021 coup. According to an ICA report, nearly half of the state’s population has been displaced. About 65,000 people have fled to India as refugees, and a further 1,30,000 have been driven from their homes but remain inside Myanmar.
Many of those who flee cross into Mizoram, which shares a 510-km border with Myanmar. Mizoram has officially recorded 38,213 refugees, mostly from Myanmar but also from Manipur and Bangladesh, though local groups believe the real number could be above 60,000.
The Chin share ethnic and cultural ties with the Mizo, and most of them are sheltered by villagers, churches and relatives rather than by any formal system.
The bombs that changed their lives
According to the ICA, between February 1, 2021, and February 1, 2025, the junta carried out 241 airstrikes in Chin State and dropped more than 1,061 bombs. The organisation reported that the attacks killed 249 people, injured more than 424 and destroyed over 1,280 homes.
Burma News International (BNI), a Myanmar-based bilingual media coalition, published a report on February 10 stating that the Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO) had raised concerns over Myanmar junta airstrikes targeting churches, Buddhist religious buildings and civilian neighbourhoods across Chin State, resulting in civilian deaths and damage to religious sites.
According to CHRO, junta fighter jets launched coordinated airstrikes across Kanpetlet, Mindat and Matupi townships, hitting villages and towns where civilians were sheltering.
In Chinpiang village in Matupi Township, an airstrike hit a Baptist church on February 8, 2026, while worshippers were attending Sunday services, killing at least three civilians, including a child, and injuring others, CHRO said. The explosions also damaged a school and nearby homes.
Liani was among those injured in this attack.
The attacks have continued in recent months. On September 1, BNI reported that a junta airstrike on Vumkhum village in Mindat Township, southern Chin State, killed eight civilians and injured at least 15 others.
BNI reported that amid difficulties advancing on the ground in southern Chin State, the military regime had increasingly resorted to targeting civilian infrastructure.
The struggle to survive
“Bombs used to be dropped from aeroplanes without warning, so we lived in constant fear,” Liani said.
After her injury, Liani’s family fled to Mizoram for her treatment, as there is no hospital they can access for major surgeries within the resistance-occupied area. Currently, they rent a house in Sihhmui village, near Aizawl, where she lives with her three children. Her husband stayed behind to look after their home and farm.
In India, Liani is not legally a refugee; neither she nor her children find work legally. Like many other refugee households, Liani’s family depends on whatever odd jobs her children can find – which range from clearing weeds in people’s gardens to working construction jobs if they are lucky to find someone who is building a house and is ready to employ them.
“We are surviving on whatever money we had saved before leaving our house. Sometimes we have to eat a meal of rice and water,” she said. Requiring round-the-clock care after losing her leg, she depends on her children, who take turns looking after her while trying to find work to put food on the table. She has four children; one remained behind in Myanmar while three are with her. Her eldest child is aged twenty-nine, while the youngest just turned eighteen.
The rent is Rs 3,000 a month, and they are struggling to pay it.
Without refugee status, without a safety net
For refugees who have fled the coup, the lack of legal status cripples every part of life. They cannot apply for a UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) card because they need an identity document to travel to Delhi or any other part of the country and are not legally permitted to travel as they do not have valid visas. In September 2026, four Myanmar nationals were detained at the Katihar railway station in Bihar after authorities said they could not produce valid passports, citizenship certificates or other legal identity documents.
For refugees like Liani, who have disabilities due to landmines or bullets fired by the junta, the distress is doubled.
They cannot claim any government scheme from the host country because they are not recognised as citizens, and their refugee status is not recognised legally, as India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention.
They also cannot take up odd jobs because of their limited mobility. A close relative must stay with them as an unpaid caretaker, which removes a second person from the search for work.
A doctor based in Aizawl who spoke to EastMojo on the condition of anonymity said he was once part of a mobile clinic that provided free checkups and even prosthetics to those injured in the conflict in Myanmar, but they were forced to shut down last year due to the USAID cuts.
“For refugees who have been disabled by junta attacks, it is a double burden. Without family members abroad or someone who can support them financially, affording the care they need becomes almost impossible. Their prospects for rebuilding their lives are extremely bleak,” he said.
Progress all around, but a future on hold.
When the Sairang-Bairabi railway project was inaugurated in September 2025, the leaders of the state hailed it as “Tracks of Transformation,” saying it would transform Mizoram’s connectivity and economy. According to the latest figures, the railway line has brought a 51% rise in tourists.
But just 15 minutes from this symbol of transformation stands a dimly lit house in the Sihhmui refugee camp. Bamboo slats, laid together in a traditional criss-cross pattern and fastened to wooden poles, form its walls. Inside, a worn-out white fan hums overhead. The single-room dwelling has a makeshift kitchen at one end and a small sleeping area, just large enough for a mat, screened off by a curtain and bamboo slats. An old steel cupboard stands against the wall, while a few toys lie scattered across the floor beneath a single lightbulb. It is one of 90 homes in the camp.
Inside this house live Peter, his wife Nu Oil, and their two children, aged two and one. Until last year, Nu Oil earned a small income by stitching clothes at home. She used a manual sewing machine, but the ironing required for the work consumed considerable electricity. Eventually, other refugee families asked her to stop because of the high electricity consumption.
If they were any other family, it would be up to Peter to be the sole breadwinner, with Nu Oil not being able to continue her work. However, Peter’s circumstances are far from ordinary.
In 2021, Peter was in his final year studying history at Pakkoku University in the Magway region. But when the military seized power, he abandoned his studies and joined the Chinland Defence Force (CDF).
“I wanted freedom and democracy. I did not like the way the Burmese military controlled our people or the way our country was governed. That is why I joined the CDF,” he said.
In March 2022, Peter was in Matupi Township when his battalion was preparing to capture a village. During the operation, he stepped on a landmine.
“I thought my shoe had come off; it was so sudden that I did not even feel any pain,” he said. His fellow resistance forces covered up his wound with a cloth and took him to their camp, where there were nurses to help them. But his leg needed to be amputated, and he needed major surgery, so he was taken to Ebenezer Hospital in Aizawl.
Although the CDF receives public donations, it does not have sufficient funds to cover Peter’s medical expenses. He had to rely on financial assistance from his family to pay for his surgery. His story is not uncommon in his village. His brother-in-law was also hit in a military airstrike and died of his injuries. His niece, who is nine, lost a foot in a bomb attack.
While donations from relatives helped cover his surgery, Peter now faces the challenge of survival as a former CDF fighter living as a refugee in India with a disability.
“I am not able to do manual labour, but I also cannot go back to my country to study and provide for my family. I am at a loss on what to do and how to carry on with my life,” Peter said.
Returning to Myanmar as a person with disability would offer Peter little hope as a former CDF fighter. A November 2025 report by UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews, ‘The Hidden Crisis: Disability Rights in Post-Coup Myanmar,’ found that the military coup had reversed progress on disability rights, with people with disabilities facing worsening access to healthcare, rehabilitation and assistive devices.
While exact figures are unavailable, a large share of the injured Myanmar nationals seeking treatment in Mizoram are members of resistance forces, including the CDF and the People’s Defence Force (PDF), the armed wing of the National Unity Government.
At a hospital in Mizoram (name withheld for security reasons), EastMojo met a PDF soldier who had been shot twice and was paralysed from the waist down. He had been hospitalised for more than two months. With no prospect of recovery, he was receiving treatment for bedsores.
Another PDF member was caring for him. Although the PDF covers medical expenses for its injured members, the financial burden can become increasingly difficult for the wounded and their families to bear over time.
The 23-year-old caretaker was also shot in the shoulders in 2023.
“I have had three operations,” he said. “My battalion paid for the first two, but the third cost Rs 8 lakh, and my family had to pool their money.”
While awaiting his next surgery, he earns a living by working as a translator and caretaker for other injured soldiers who do not speak the local language.
The civil war in Myanmar is now in its fifth year. Monitoring groups such as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLEDP) say it has killed as many as 100,000 people and displaced at least 3.5 million. The military’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, now holds the title of president in a military-installed government, and he is visiting and holding diplomatic meetings with neighbouring ASEAN countries. The military has lost ground to resistance forces in the borderlands, and the regime has answered with more airstrikes, which fall on villages that cannot be held by troops, such as the villages of Liani and Peter.
At the Sihhmui refugee camp, Peter cradles his child as he looks at his mobile phone and says with a smile, “I am using the application ‘Hello Talk’ to learn English. I hope that someday I can own a computer and use my knowledge of English to support my family through the computer.”
This story was supported by the International Foundation for Disability Inclusion’s (IFDI) Journalism Fellowship on Disability Inclusion.