Mae Sot, Thailand – Within an old wooden house in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, wounded revolutionary fighters lie side by side.
Many are amputees missing legs, hands, and arms. Some have serious head wounds, and others have suffered debilitating spinal injuries. Some are blind, and others are unable to walk.
These young fighters have been wounded by landmines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and sniper fire, burned by the flames of bombs dropped by warplanes and scarred by shrapnel.
They have journeyed to this border town through the jungles from neighbouring Myanmar, seeking medical attention for injuries suffered in an intensifying civil conflict that is one of the longest and most vicious globally.
Yet their place of recovery – Sunshine Care Centre – does not boast the sleek, sterile environment of a white-walled hospital equipped with sophisticated medical equipment and staffed by qualified surgeons.
Instead, the estimated 140 war-wounded fighters at this centre are recovering in rudimentary conditions, mostly resting in wood and steel cots arranged under a traditional Thai stilted house.
They are cared for by volunteers, who themselves have fled from Myanmar.
Unable to continue fighting, most cannot return home for fear of violent reprisal by the Myanmar military, whose coup they have been resisting for four years.
On February 1, 2021, the army removed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which ignited an unprecedented uprising against military rule in the nation of 54 million people.
The coup – and the violent crackdown on peaceful protests that followed – is said to have propelled Myanmar’s Generation Z, the demographic of young people born between 1997 and 2012, to take up arms.
This generation went into the jungles and highlands to join ethnic armed groups and newly formed civil defence militias – known as the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) – as well as participating in support roles such as nursing wounded fighters.
One of those who joined the fight was Ko Khant, 23, who had his hand blown off at the wrist and lost sight in his left eye when an unexploded RPG rocket fired by military forces detonated in his hands.
Resistance fighters often collect bombs and rockets that fail to detonate as their forces lack adequate weapons and ammunition, Ko Khant told Al Jazeera, though on this occasion the rocket exploded, causing grievous injuries.
“When the RPG dropped from the [military] side, I went to pick it up, and it just exploded,” he said. “Sometimes when the RPG drops they don’t explode. My wrist was injured and my eye was injured with gunpowder.”
Before the military takeover, Ko Khant was a chef in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, specialising in European cuisine. After joining pro-democracy street protests and experiencing the violent military crackdown, he fled to Karen State, bordering Thailand, to join PDF fighters.
He received some training and soon found himself on the front lines, where, in January 2022, he suffered injuries, becoming partially disabled.
Smuggled across the border and treated in Thai hospitals, Ko Khant then came to Sunshine Care Centre to recover, and now he helps run the centre’s day-to-day activities.
He was offered a prosthetic hand while in recovery, but he declined, telling Al Jazeera there were other amputees in greater need.
“There are people who are in need, a lot more than me,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel like I have no hand.”
