Blog Elements – Page 198

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

The missing prisoners of Mandalay Palace

June 7, 2023/in News

Yu Wai Myint was a cheerful young woman who liked to sing as she worked at her sewing machine. Forced by family circumstances to drop out of school in the eighth grade, the 22-year-old seamstress never seemed to lament her lot in life. “She grew up mostly under the care of her grandparents and uncles. […]

Myanmar junta continues aerial attacks on Sagaing schools

June 7, 2023/in News

Regime forces launched aerial assaults on two schools in Sagaing Region’s Kalay and Kawlin townships earlier this week, injuring several people, according to local sources. On Monday, an attack helicopter fired on a school in Shu Khin Thar, a village located some 20km north of the town of Kalay, at around 10am. Four people—three men […]

The missing prisoners of Mandalay Palace

June 7, 2023/in News

Myanmar junta continues aerial attacks on Sagaing schools

June 7, 2023/in News

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

The missing prisoners of Mandalay Palace

June 7, 2023/in News

“She grew up mostly under the care of her grandparents and uncles. She was a happy person. She always sang when she was sewing clothes,” recalled her friend Ko Nge.

But Yu Wai Myint’s life took a dramatic turn when, in February 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power. Having spent half of her young life under civilian rule, she had no desire to see her country come under the control of yet another brutal junta. And so she fought back.

At first, the Mandalay native took part in protests to oppose the coup; then, as the crackdowns grew more ruthless, she joined others in setting up a Facebook page to inform fellow activists of the military’s movements in the city.

As an administrator of the “Voice of Mandalay,” or “Vomdy,” page, she was more than just another keyboard warrior. She was also a wanted woman.

She eluded arrest until late last year. Then, on September 4, two military vehicles appeared in front of her home in Mandalay’s Aungmyay Thazan Township.

“Junta troops ordered her uncle and his wife at gunpoint to show them where she lived. When they arrived, some soldiers went up into the house and some remained downstairs to keep watch,” said Ko Nge.

Like many other regime opponents, Yu Wai Myint had two phones—one she used for more sensitive communications, and another as a decoy. After they caught her, the soldiers slapped her around, demanding to know where her second phone was.

“They threatened her, saying she would find out what they’re capable of if she lied about not having another phone,” Ko Nge recalled.

Later that day, pro-junta Telegram channels reported that “a beautiful young woman” was in regime custody and “being questioned with care.” She has not been heard from since.

*Anti-dictatorship protests in Mandalay on February 7, 2021 (Myanmar Now)*

Mandalay’s dreaded palace

All that anybody knows about Yu Wai Myint’s fate is that she was taken to Mandalay Palace, the site of one of the junta’s most notorious interrogation centres.

Located at the centre of Mandalay’s walled and moated old city, the palace was the residence of Myanmar’s royal family until 1885, when Thibaw Min, the country’s last king, was forced by the British to abdicate and go into exile in India.

Today, it is one of the most feared places in Myanmar. Torture is routine, and the best that one can hope for after being “questioned with care” there is to be transferred to Mandalay’s Obo Prison.

So far, however, there is no evidence that Yu Wai Myint has yet emerged from within the palace walls. There is faint hope, however, that she is still alive.

“I’ve heard that she is still inside and that she has contracted tuberculosis and is coughing up blood. But we don’t know if she’s getting any treatment. We’re just praying that she will be taken to the hospital,” said Ko Nge, citing a military source.

It is not unusual in Myanmar for prisoners to disappear from sight after being taken into custody. The regime releases no information about detainees, so the friends and families of those behind bars have to rely on sympathetic sources within the system to find out what little they can.

“There are many prisoners whose whereabouts are unknown. They do not appear at court, and we don’t know if they are dead or alive,” said Tate Naing, the secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which attempts to keep track of Myanmar’s thousands of political prisoners.

Lawyers also have limited access to Myanmar’s detention centres, and often learn disturbing details about how prisoners are treated.

Sexual assault, sometimes ending in murder, is common within Mandalay Palace, according to one female lawyer who spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.

“Women are molested and verbally abused, and often raped. Then their bodies are disposed of to conceal the crime,” said the lawyer, who estimated that more than a third of the roughly 1,000 people who have been interrogated at Mandalay Palace since the coup were women.

The case of Aye Nandar Soe

“The most notable case is that of the young woman from Sagaing, Aye Nandar Soe. She was blindfolded and taken outside at night. She never arrived at Obo Prison, and no one is allowed to inquire about her,” said the lawyer.

Aye Nandar Soe was a 21-year-old third-year student at the Sagaing University of Education when she was arrestedfor her anti-regime activism on September 18, 2021. As president of the university’s student union and a native of Sagaing’s Taze Township, she led protests both on campus and in her home village, where her parents were simple farmers.

She was on her way home from Mandalay when she was dragged out of a bus at a checkpoint on the bridge linking the city to Sagaing, on the opposite side of the Ayeyarwady River. Like Yu Wai Myint one year later, she was taken to Mandalay Palace, and all contact with her has since been lost.

Wai Lin, a close friend, said that it has been more than eight months since anyone has received any news about her.

“We heard that she was severely tortured, and that she was taken out of the interrogation centre one night with some prisoners who were on death row,” he said, explaining that this information came from other Mandalay Palace detainees who had since been released.

“There was no more news after that. Then we heard that she was dead. It has been a year and a half now,” he added, his voice breaking with emotion.

“I still cry whenever I think about her. I miss her very much. She was a very stubborn and reserved girl,” he said.

After taking a moment to suppress a deep sob, Wai Lin continued in a stern voice: “It’s disgraceful that the junta hasn’t released any news about her. They haven’t even told us if she really is dead. It’s an outrage, and I will never forgive them for this,” he said.

*Mandalay Palace in late 2020 (Myanmar Now)*

Breaking the silence

Many others have died under similarly murky circumstances inside Mandalay Prison, in most cases without any acknowledgement from the regime.

Lin Paing Soe, a student leader from Kyaukse Technological University, is believed to have died inside the interrogation centre within a day of his arrest on September 30, 2021. It took weeks, however, for this news to reach his family.

Another prisoner who has still not been accounted for is Ven. Sandima, an activist monk who was arrested during a raid on Thinzagar Monastery in Mandalay’s Chanayethazan Township on February 9, 2022. Fears for his safetybegan to grow when he had still not been transferred from Mandalay Palace to Obo Prison more than three months after his arrest. His whereabouts are still unknown, more than a year later.

There is good reason to assume that those who have not been seen since their arrest have been murdered by the regime, according to the lawyer who spoke to Myanmar Now.

“They have been torturing and killing people in plain sight ever since they seized power. It’s even easier for them to do the same to prisoners in their custody and then just dispose of them,” she said.

In January of last year, disturbing reports emerged from Mandalay Palace of three members of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions being tortured by having bamboo sticks thrust inside their rectums. They were reportedly denied treatment for their life-threatening injuries.

The identities of the victims were released with the permission of family members in the hope that doing so would protect them from further abuse. However, it is often an agonising decision for families to go public with their fears about the fate of their loved ones.

According to AAPP’s Tate Naing, there is always the concern that speaking out could result in prolonged detention, or worse. But, he added, it is generally better not to allow these cases to go unreported.

“Their lives will actually be in less danger if their stories come out in the news. And the family may be notified about the prisoner’s whereabouts, or their death, even if this information is never disclosed publicly,” he said.

Remaining silent only allows the regime to quietly make the evidence of its brutal treatment of prisoners go away, he added.

“If a prisoner has been severely injured due to torture, they may decide that the best thing to do is just finish them off once and for all,” he said.

Myanmar Now News

Myanmar junta continues aerial attacks on Sagaing schools

June 7, 2023/in News

Regime forces launched aerial assaults on two schools in Sagaing Region’s Kalay and Kawlin townships earlier this week, injuring several people, according to local sources.

On Monday, an attack helicopter fired on a school in Shu Khin Thar, a village located some 20km north of the town of Kalay, at around 10am.

Four people—three men and a woman—sustained multiple injuries in that attack, which was the first ever reported in the village of around 200 households.

It was unclear why the village was targeted, but residents said it appeared to be related to a meeting that was being held at the school.

“I think someone leaked information to the junta, as they only attacked the school and nowhere else,” said a local man who did not want to be identified.

Myanmar Now was unable to confirm if the people inside the school at the time of the attack were members of any resistance organisation.

Later the same day, junta troops based in Kalay fired several rounds of heavy artillery at Letpanchaung, a village near Shu Khin Thar, injuring three more people and forcing residents to flee, local sources said.

A day earlier, another school was bombed in Kawlin Township, some 200km northeast of Kalay, after junta troops there came under repeated attack by local resistance forces.

Several buildings sustained heavy damage after the school in the village of Taung Ba Lu came under attack at around 7pm on Sunday, an officer of the anti-regime People’s Defence Force (PDF) told Myanmar Now.

“The bomb didn’t fall right on the main building, but landed in the compound, destroying several buildings,” said the PDF officer.

Some damage was also reported in the nearby village of Chaung Kway, which was bombed at around the same time. No casualties were reported in either village.

The attacks came after a full day of fighting between resistance forces and a junta column of around 250 soldiers that was returning to its base in Koe Taung Boe, a village about 15km south of Kawlin, after a week of raids in the area.

Several PDF battalions took part in the clashes, which began at around 8am and continued through the day, according to the PDF officer.

About three hours before the junta aircraft arrived, troops based in Wuntho, north of Kawlin, fired on resistance positions with Howitzer guns in support of the column from Koe Taung Boe, he added.

Several regime soldiers were killed and a number of PDF troops were injured in the fighting, which reportedly lasted until the column reached Koe Taung Boe at around 11pm.

This week’s airstrikes were just the latest targeting schools in Sagaing Region, which has been a stronghold of the resistance movement since the military seized power in February 2021.

Last month, there were at least three similar attacks in the region: one on a high school in the village of the Htan Taw Bodi in Ye-U Township on May 9; another on a high school in Chaung Ma, a village in Kani Township, on May 17; and a third on a school in Pauk Inn Myaing, also in Kani Township, on May 31.

Civilian casualties, including children, were reported in all three incident, which are part of a pattern of indiscriminate killing by regime forces since the coup.

In September of last year, at least 13 civilians, including seven children, were killed in a brutal aerial assault on a school in the village of Letyetkone in Depayin Township.

Despite coming under strong international condemnation for that attack, the regime has shown no signs of relenting in its targeting of schools.

In April, another airstrike on a school in Webula, a village in Chin State’s Falam Township, left nine people dead, including the principal of the school and his wife.

The next day, a single attack on the village of Pa Zi Gyi in Sagaing Region’s Kanbalu Township left at least 160 people, including dozens of children, dead.

Myanmar’s academic year began last Thursday, raising fears that more children may be killed in junta attacks on schools, especially those run by local groups opposed to the regime.

Myanmar Now News

Spring Revolution

Civil Society Position Paper on ASEAN’s Goal of a Myanmar-Owned and -Led SolutionDecember 18, 2024 - 12:11 pm
Recommendations to ASEAN and Its Member States (1) Move beyond the 5PC to achieve a Myanmar people-led and people-centered solution to the crisis in Myanmar. ASEAN’s “Myanmar-owned and -led” approach must be backed by genuine political will that aligns with and supports the collective aspirations of the people of Myanmar. (2) Cease all pressure on […]
The Airstrikes after the journey to the China of the Junta Military LeaderDecember 10, 2024 - 1:28 pm
Operation 1027 was a coordinated military attack against the junta on October 27th, 2023. It was carried out by the Northern Brotherhood, which includes the Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. Several months later, the Three Brotherhood Alliance held three meetings to negotiate with China on January 11 […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 15 to 21, 2024)September 27, 2024 - 8:26 am
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 15 to 21, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, Shan State, Chin State, Rakhine State, and Kachin State from September 15th to 21st. The Military Junta committed arresting, occupying the properties, threatening by using power, and […]

Multimedia

GenocideSeptember 2, 2025 - 9:42 am
Crimes Against HumanityJune 16, 2025 - 7:55 am
International Humanitarian Law Cartoon AnimatonApril 29, 2025 - 8:37 am
အတိတ်မှ ဆိုးရွားသည့် အကြီးအကျယ် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများ ထပ်မံမဖြစ်ပွားစေရေးအ တွက် အာမခံခြင်း (Guarantees of non-recurrence)February 10, 2025 - 9:58 am

ND Burma

ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

ND Burma

Recent Posts