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‘They burned him alive’ — Residents describe the military raid that destroyed a Hpakant Township village

September 14, 2022/in News

Dozens of people are missing and presumed dead after a junta siege on the village of Sezin forces thousands of civilians to seek refuge in northern and central Myanmar The surviving residents of Sezin remember August 9 as the last night in their homes. By 2am, they describe their village as being engulfed in flames, […]

Two journalists among more than a dozen arrested in Yangon protest crackdown

September 14, 2022/in News

At least one person was shot attempting to escape and another was severely beaten after being captured, witnesses said At least 15 people, including two freelance journalists, were arrested during a crackdown on a protest in Yangon’s Kyeemyindaing Township on Tuesday, according to sources. One protester who managed to evade arrest told Myanmar Now that […]

‘They burned him alive’ — Residents describe the military raid that destroyed a Hpakant Township village

September 14, 2022/in News

Two journalists among more than a dozen arrested in Yangon protest crackdown

September 14, 2022/in News

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‘They burned him alive’ — Residents describe the military raid that destroyed a Hpakant Township village

September 14, 2022/in News

Dozens of people are missing and presumed dead after a junta siege on the village of Sezin forces thousands of civilians to seek refuge in northern and central Myanmar

The surviving residents of Sezin remember August 9 as the last night in their homes.

By 2am, they describe their village as being engulfed in flames, bullets and screams.

It was at that time that they said soldiers from both the Myanmar army and the Shanni Nationalities Army (SNA) arrived in the community, located in Kachin State’s Hpakant Township, carrying bottles of petrol and shouting at residents to submit to the junta forces.

“They told us to come outside and lie flat on our stomachs on the ground,” 40-year-old Myo Win of Sezin’s first ward told Myanmar Now. “They asked if we were involved with any armed groups. When we told them we were just civilians, they started burning our homes.”

The raid followed a day-long clash between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the joint forces of the SNA and military—an alliance which the SNA denies. The KIA, which had seized both junta and SNA outposts in the village one day earlier, was outgunned and forced to withdraw.

Regime forces closed in on Sezin in the hours that followed, laying siege to the community.

As troops set fire to the village’s 700 households, they reportedly shot people who tried to escape, killing an unconfirmed number of civilians. Locals speculate there may have been at least 40 casualties, as multiple residents who went missing that day were still unaccounted for at the time of reporting. Eqpx-7ha.jpeg

Sezin village pictured after the military raid on August 9 (Supplied)

With around 400 others, Myo Win ran with his family to seek refuge in Sassanapala, Sezin’s Buddhist monastery, passing the bodies of their neighbours as they fled across the village.

“We saw at least six dead bodies on our way. Two of them had been shot in the legs and had bled out,” he said.

Another Sezin local told Myanmar Now that he saw soldiers dragging the bodies of civilians who had been killed into burning homes to “get rid of them,” and shooting people as they ran out of buildings that had been set ablaze.

KIA soldiers in Mai Ja Yang, a town controlled by the group in northern Kachin State (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Military uses airstrikes to fend off KIA attack in Hpakant

KIA forces successfully overran an army outpost a day before their failed attempt to seize control of a police station on Tuesday

Escalation of tension

Located around 40 miles southwest of Hpakant’s administrative centre and on the border with Sagaing’s Homalin Township, Sezin is a hub for domestic migrants from both neighbouring Sagaing and Magway regions seeking work in the area’s jade and gold mines.

The village, known for a large number of bars, massage parlours, and karaoke venues disproportionate to its small size, descended into conflict in June.

Forces from the SNA—an ethnic Shanni armed group—reportedly entered Sezin on June 28, carrying out searches of homes. The move ignited tension with the KIA, which is active in much of Hpakant Township. Eqwpecza_0.Jpeg

Members of the SNA (SNA)

A series of clashes broke out on July 16 between the KIA and regime troops after locals said Kachin forces intercepted and surrounded a military column around one mile outside of Sezin. The junta launched multiple airstrikes in order to create an escape route for the trapped soldiers, according to residents of the area.

In the days that followed, locals told Myanmar Now that they saw troops belonging to the SNA joining Myanmar army units in battle. SNA spokesperson Col Sai Aung Mein rejected the allegation that they were allied with the junta’s forces, but confirmed that they had clashed with the KIA, who he said had “trespassed” into the Shanni army’s territory.

On the day of the arson attack on Sezin, the KIA had attempted to overrun the junta police station in the village but military airstrikes, heavy artillery fire, and the arrival of reinforcement troops prevented them from capturing the site.

The regime forces that drove them out did not spare the village.

A KIA soldier seen in September 2012 (EPA)

Junta forces torch Hpakant Township village after forcing KIA withdrawal, locals say

The Myanmar army and the Shanni Nationalities Army set fire to hundreds of homes in the village of Sezin following a day-long clash with Kachin forces, residents say

Arson and murder

At least three of the Sezin residents trapped in houses torched that night were elderly people who were unable to walk and therefore flee, locals said. Among them were two women in Wards 4 and 5, whose names were not known at the time of reporting.

A third was 79-year-old Maung Ko who lived next to Myo Win in Ward 1.

“They burned him alive as he was unable to leave the house because he was a parapalegic,” Myo Win said. “They poured petrol on him and burned him along with the house.”

He added that another villager, Nga Mu, age 30, was killed after he pleaded with the soldiers to stop the arson.

“I heard that he was forced to get on his knees and he was shot when he tried to run,” Myo Win explained.

The list of people killed and those who missing during the raid on August 9 (Myanmar Now)

While both eyewitnesses and local media outlets have reported that the SNA participated in the military’s assault on Sezin, its spokesperson Sai Aung Mein denied his group’s involvement.

“Everyone knows and everyone saw that it was the KIA and PDF that torched the village,” he told Myanmar Now, referring to the People’s Defence Force, an anti-junta guerrilla group that formed in the aftermath of the February 2021 coup.

“Many people know the truth,” he added.

He repeated the claim that the KIA had attacked the SNA’s front line across the regional border in Homalin Township, which caused the clashes earlier this month.

“We have not been collaborating with the junta but our base was attacked by the KIA and we fired back at them. That was all,” the spokesperson said.

Myanmar Now was unable to obtain comment from KIA information officer Col Naw Bu regarding the incidents in Sezin.

The junta has released no information on its own actions in the region.

‘A loss for words’

Dr Kyaw Myo Zin, from Sagaing’s Ye-U Township, was among the many healthcare workers nationwide who left his job and joined the Civil Disobedience Movement after last year’s coup. He and his wife, whose name was not confirmed at the time of reporting, had moved to Sezin in recent months in order to open a clinic.

While the doctor survived the August 9 raid on the village, his wife did not. Locals said she died of a gunshot wound to the head, fired by a junta soldier.

Kyaw Myo Zin fled, and was found the following day by other displaced residents, reportedly in severe mental distress.

Local Myo Win was among those who located the doctor near Hao Pa and Ta Ma Khan villages, some 20 miles away, where most of Sezin’s residents initially sought refuge on August 10.

“[The couple] hadn’t been here for very long and this attack happened when we thought we were at peace. That suddenness might have been what broke him,” he said, adding that the doctor’s whereabouts were no longer known.

A house in Sezin village pictured after the raid on August 9 (Supplied)

Naing Naing Win, a 44-year-old vegetable seller from Sezin, was among those who survived the nighttime raid on August 9 and planned to reach Ta Ma Khan with her family the next day.

She received a phone call from a friend telling her that the head monk at the Sassanapala monastery might be able to help them relocate to the neighbouring village. At 6:30pm on August 10, she and her husband, 33-year-old carpenter Pho Pain, sent their daughters, aged 12 and four, to the site by motorcycle.

The parents followed later, after Pho Pain insisted that he go back to the house to bring his older daughter’s bicycle with them.

As they approached the monastery, a bullet whizzed past Naing Naing Win’s ear, hitting Pho Pain in the head. He was killed instantly, she said.

“I am at a loss for words. We survived the aerial bombings but he died right when we were arriving at the monastery,” Naing Naing Win said. “I feel so helpless, because now I have no one to depend on to support our two daughters.”

She managed to retrieve Pho Pain’s body the following day. He was cremated, his ashes scattered in the Uru stream which runs past Sezin.

At the time of reporting, she and her daughters were staying at the home of her late husband’s relatives.

Within days, even the villages of Ta Ma Khan and Hao Pa proved to be unsafe for Sezin’s 2,000 displaced civilians, who slept in the communities’ schools and monasteries and relied on food donations from locals.

On August 12, troops at the military base near Ta Ma Khan began firing heavy artillery into the area. Sezin’s residents fled again, this time to the towns of Myitkyina, Hpakant, Mohnyin and Hopin in Kachin State, with some travelling as far as Mandalay, and to Sagaing and Magway.

With most of Sezin’s residences destroyed, the journey back home is not guaranteed.

“I don’t think words can do justice to the type of fear we felt that day,” a man from the village said of the raid that forced him into displacement. “We barely survived.”

Myanmar Now News

Two journalists among more than a dozen arrested in Yangon protest crackdown

September 14, 2022/in News

At least one person was shot attempting to escape and another was severely beaten after being captured, witnesses said

At least 15 people, including two freelance journalists, were arrested during a crackdown on a protest in Yangon’s Kyeemyindaing Township on Tuesday, according to sources.

One protester who managed to evade arrest told Myanmar Now that plainclothes regime forces appeared almost immediately after the rally on Panbingyi Street began at around 4:45pm.

“Some people hadn’t even gotten out of their cars when [the junta troops] showed up pointing their guns at them,” said the protester, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The purpose of the rally, which was timed to coincide with the opening of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, was to call on the world body to retain diplomat Kyaw Moe Tun as Myanmar’s permanent representative.

Last December, the UN’s credentials committee voted to keep Kyaw Moe Tun—who weeks after last year’s coup delivered an impassioned speech denouncing the military takeover—in the post, in a blow to the junta’s bid for international recognition.

Protesters were just beginning to unfurl banners that read “UN: Prove Your Existence For Justice” when regime forces in civilian vehicles parked on Panbingyi Street started making arrests, another activist told Myanmar Now.

At least one person who attempted to flee the scene was shot in the leg and another was severely beaten after being captured, according to a local resident.

“The protesters ran past our car as they were trying to get away. The plainclothes officers started shouting that they were thieves and told bystanders to stop them. Some people at the end of the street caught them. After that, two shots were fired,” said a woman who did not want to be identified.

The planned flash mob protest was organised by several anti-regime groups, including the Octopus Youth Organisation, the Education Students Union, the Myanmar Labour Alliance, and the Bama Youth Network.

The Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar, another group that took part in the protest, said in a statement that four of its members—Nay Min Tun, Aye Chan Aung, Zue Zue Ra Khine, and Yamin Kay Thwe Khine—were among those arrested, along with a driver named Than Zaw.

The identities of the other detainees, including the two freelance journalists, could not be confirmed at the time of reporting.

Panbingyi Street was the scene last December of another protest that ended when regime forces used their vehicles to ram into a crowd of demonstrators.

Although there were reports of several deaths in that incident, the junta later claimed that only two men and a woman had been injured in what it called a “crowd dispersal operation”.

Despite tight security and violent crackdowns, pro-democracy groups continue to hold rallies in Yangon calling for an end to military rule.

Last month, the regime arrested a protester and a freelance photographer who marked the 34th anniversary of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising on August 8 by displaying umbrellas with the number eight printed on them in Burmese.

One of those who escaped arrest on Tuesday said the latest attempt to crush the anti-coup movement would not deter activists determined to restore civilian rule.

“Those of us who are still free will just redouble our efforts to bring down this dictatorship,” he said.

Myanmar Now News

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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.

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