We arrived in the middle of a quiet night and the door of the small house was open, but the place had the feel of a graveyard. When we arrived, we shone the beam of our torch at the door of the house.

The door was open, but the small house belonged to a person who was no longer going in and out of it.

This was my younger brother’s house.

He had been arrested on October 16 by the evil forces who call themselves the military council. When I heard my brother had been arrested, I felt a fear deep in my mind and was frightened as I left for the place where our mother was.

We comforted his mother, who was grief-stricken, because deep down she knew she had lost her son. For the rest of us, we still held some hope that he would return. We tried thinking about the best outcome and rejected the many negative thoughts running through our minds.

We said some comforting words to her, such as “Auntie … don’t worry too much. He is not guilty of anything. He’ll be released after an interrogation. We’ll all be following his situation and asking for information continuously” and he’ll come back.

My younger brother was 25-year-old Ko Min Ko Ko. He had been a star of our peoples’ revolution who resisted in non-violent ways against those who robbed our people of power by force. There were many following in his footsteps along the path of a non-violent mass movement in his native Long Lone Township.

The military junta’s forces, which had been based at the Nyin Maw Buddhist monastery in Long Lone Township since October 13, arrived at Ko Min Ko Ko’s house on October 16.

The military column arrived there after fighting battles against revolutionary forces on its way. Although tens of thousands of villagers nearby fled whenever the military launched its operations, Ko Min Ko Ko remained in his house because he could not abandon his bed-ridden father.

Then he fell into the hands of evil.

It did not take long. We first heard the news in the afternoon of October 21. His lifeless body had been found near the Nyin Maw Buddhist monastery where the military forces had been stationed.

It was only when the military forces – which had been reckless shooting at whatever they saw – pulled out that we could get to his body. At first, we thought it couldn’t be him. We were in denial that this could happen to him.

We were rejecting the truth – silently praying that what we didn’t want to happen and what we dared not to expect had happened. We had prayed and hoped he would be released. Then we finally had to confirm the death of a person who we prayed would not be dead.

What we found is very hard to describe – his eyes were covered by a scarf and his hands were tied behind his back, and his half-buried, lifeless body was smeared with dirt and dust.

Did these evil people cruelly and inhumanely cut his throat and bury him? We could see his lifeless body and that his head has almost been severed. One of his hands was sticking out of the loose ground.

Why did they cruelly kill this person who has expressed his desires and beliefs non-violently. For his mother, this event would not be forgotten until the end of time.

Eventually, some hesitantly confirmed it was Ko Min Ko Ko after they saw a pair of sports shorts with Barcelona No. 9 on them. Looking at his eyes, I accepted that my younger brother had been killed in a barbaric manner.

How would we tell his mother that her son’s body – which had been inhumanely tortured, and his face deformed and bruised – had been abandoned and buried on a roadside? After asking each other that question, we were silent on our way back home.

We wondered how grief-stricken a mother who had lost her son would be. When she was told, my mother wept uncontrollably, while we remained silent.

After first seeing the tears in our eyes that fell like rain drops, our mother realized that her young son would not be returning home.

Weep? We do weep.

We weep for a son whose funeral rites were not done in accordance with our religious beliefs. We weep for a mother who could not see her most loved son for a last time.

We weep with bitterness over the evil military who killed an innocent person by tying his hands behind his back and cutting his throat, like killing an animal.

As I sat in his now empty house, I recalled how we had walked together many times during the anti-dictatorship mass movements, one of the many things we could no longer do together.

I smelled blood when I looked at the bucket his clothes had been put in to be washed. His washed clothes seemed to be stained with blood. I started searching for things related to him on the walls of his house.

I found a certificate of honor awarded to Maung Min Ko Ko for winning third prize in the third grade at the Basic Education High School in Auot Ye Phyu village and a childhood photo of him accepting the prize.

While I was in deep thought and reminiscing about my younger brother, I heard someone crying and turned to look.

Our mother would weep because she missed her son who could not come back to her, and now it was a grown man’s turn to cry. That man was the father who my brother would not abandon when the military arrived. His crying was a sound none of us will ever forget. We all had tears in our eyes too.

My younger brother …

The history you sowed will bear fruit one day, with the Long Lone streets as witnesses. But for now… my younger brother … may you rest in peace.

This essay was written by a leading member of a non-violent movement based in Dawei.

Essay by Moe Set

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