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Military detains three more lawyers representing junta opponents in Mandalay

July 4, 2022/in News

Like other attorneys targeted before them, they were arrested after leaving their clients’ hearings in Obo Prison Junta authorities arrested three more Mandalay-based lawyers representing political detainees on Wednesday as they returned home from court hearings inside the city’s prison, according to sources within the local legal network. The detainees—identified as Tin Win Aung, his […]

Survivors haunted by Myanmar army massacre in Sagaing

July 3, 2022/in News

Eyewitnesses to the brutal killing of 28 civilians in Ye-U Township recall a junta attack that was found to have been documented by the soldiers themselves No one will stay in the eastern parts of Mone Taing Pin anymore, where locals claim that dogs howl without provocation, putrid odours materialise and vanish, and shadowy figures […]

Military detains three more lawyers representing junta opponents in Mandalay

July 4, 2022/in News

Survivors haunted by Myanmar army massacre in Sagaing

July 3, 2022/in News

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Military detains three more lawyers representing junta opponents in Mandalay

July 4, 2022/in News

Like other attorneys targeted before them, they were arrested after leaving their clients’ hearings in Obo Prison

Junta authorities arrested three more Mandalay-based lawyers representing political detainees on Wednesday as they returned home from court hearings inside the city’s prison, according to sources within the local legal network.

The detainees—identified as Tin Win Aung, his wife Thae Su Naing, and Thuta—were reportedly leaving Obo Prison after attending hearings for their clients within the closed court there.

Three of their local colleagues spoke to Myanmar Now on the condition of anonymity and confirmed their arrests to Myanmar Now. At the time of reporting it was not known where they were being held in junta custody or why they had been specifically targeted.

“We still don’t know the details of their arrests. I only heard that Thuta’s vehicle was also seized,” one of the lawyers said.

Following the February 2021 military coup, lawyers representing jailed activists and political opponents of the military have also faced threats to their personal security for challenging the practice of arbitrary detentions in a junta-controlled judiciary.

While the number of lawyers detained across the country is unknown, attorneys in Mandalay said that at least 10 of their colleagues had been arrested since the coup and dozens more are wanted by the military authorities.

Among the detainees is 43-year-old Ywet Nu Aung, a prominent lawyer arrested on April 28. She was representing jailed Mandalay chief minister Zaw Myint Maung and other leaders of the ousted National League For Democracy (NLD) government at the time of her arrest. She was later charged with violating the Counterterrorism Law for allegedly providing funding to an armed resistance group, and was transferred to the Obo Prison in May.

Days before Ywet Nu Aung’s arrest, Si Thu, another lawyer known for helping farmers in land disputes with the military, was beaten by soldiers in front of his wife and children before being taken away from his home in Chanayethazan Township.

Last December, attorney Lwin Lwin Mar and three other lawyers—all women—were also jailed by junta authorities.

Following the series of arrests, lawyers representing junta opponents have reportedly become hesitant to go to their clients’ hearings inside Obo Prison.

Ywet Nu Aung is seen in front of the Dakhina District Courthouse in Naypyitaw in 2019 (Nyan Hlaing Lin/Myanmar Now)

Lawyer facing life sentence on terror charges sent to Obo Prison

Ywet Nu Aung was being held inside one of Myanmar’s most notorious interrogation centres prior to her transfer to the prison

Lawyers have been targeted outside of Mandalay as well. In the military’s administrative capital of Naypyitaw, Thein Hlaing Tun—who was representing Myo Aung, the ousted mayor under the NLD—was detained after leaving a court hearing in May 2021. Similarly, two lawyers for deposed Karen State chief minister Nang Khin Htwe Myint were arrested and charged with incitement in June.

The military council has placed a gag order on the lawyers of incarcerated State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and the NLD’s chief ministers in an effort to restrict information released concerning their trials and charges.

As of Friday, Myanmar’s military council had detained more than 14,000 people since the coup, of whom 3,000 had been released.

Myanmar Now News

Survivors haunted by Myanmar army massacre in Sagaing

July 3, 2022/in News

Eyewitnesses to the brutal killing of 28 civilians in Ye-U Township recall a junta attack that was found to have been documented by the soldiers themselves

No one will stay in the eastern parts of Mone Taing Pin anymore, where locals claim that dogs howl without provocation, putrid odours materialise and vanish, and shadowy figures are spotted only to disappear before they can be identified.

In May, the military massacred nearly 30 people in this village in Sagaing Region’s Ye-U Township. Though the victims’ remains have since been cremated and buried, survivors believe, in accordance with Buddhist custom, that their souls cannot transition into the afterlife until certain religious rituals have been performed.

Due to continued Myanmar army attacks, the living have been unable to make offerings to monks to share the karmic energy that would guide their loved ones to the next realm.

Once a sceptic of such practices, Mone Taing Pin villager Ko Linn* said he now believes that the ceremony is necessary, speculating that bone fragments of the victims found in homes burned by junta troops may be binding the spirits of the deceased to the location.

“We are planning to make donations in the name of the victims so that their spirits can cross over,” Ko Linn explained. “We will also invite monks to pray for the village and we will spread consecrated sand all over.”

More than 100 locals were initially detained during a May 10 military raid on the 400-household Mone Taing Pin, following an attack by a local defence force on a junta column outside the village that morning.

Twenty-eight of the captives, all men aged 20 to 60, were later found to have been killed. Three local resistance fighters were also shot dead, bringing the total number of those slain at the site to 31.

Charred remains were found in four of the at least 30 homes in Mon Taing Pin that were burned down by regime forces during a two-day occupation of the village that began on May 10 (Supplied)

More burned bodies discovered in Sagaing’s Ye-U Township

Locals say they continue to find the remains of victims killed by regime troops who occupied their villages last week

Myanmar Now conducted interviews with five survivors of the attack.

Fifty-year-old Thin Kyi hid in Mone Taing Pin’s monastic library with her husband, Thein Aung, when soldiers opened fire on the village with guns and artillery on the morning of May 10.

She recalled bullets hitting the walls around them, and troops entering the compound soon after, capturing the 100 people who had sought refuge on the religious grounds. They separated some 30 men from the women, tying their hands with rope, questioning and beating them.

The remaining women, of whom there were more than 70, were held for three days without food, another survivor said.

The soldiers released eight elderly men, including U Myint, who described to Myanmar Now the interrogations that took place.

“They wanted us to say that we were funding the PDF,” he said, referring to the People’s Defence Force, the armed wing of the civilian National Unity Government (NUG). “They asked us where the PDF stayed, and how many PDF members were in the village. We got beaten when we didn’t know the answers.”

Ten of the men who were detained were killed on May 10, and 18 more the following morning, he said.

“They had their hands tied behind their backs and were blindfolded,” U Myint added.

He escaped with seven other men after the military left Mone Taing Pin on May 12. The soldiers reportedly took three monks from the village with them as hostages.
Remains_of_mone_taing_pin_victims.jpeg

The charred remains of victims of the massacre found in the houses in the eastern part of Mone Taing Pin village (Supplied)

Thein Aung, Thin Kyi’s husband, was last seen being taken away by the soldiers from the monastery.

“Run if you see them, or else you will face the same fate my husband did. They burned him alive,” she said.

Now a widow raising three children, she told Myanmar Now that she did not expect she would ever fully recover from the trauma of losing her husband and neighbours to the junta’s violence.

“Don’t ask me if I hate the military. I will make sure to teach my children to burn with hate upon hearing the word ‘military,’” she said.

Visual evidence emerges

RFA published photographic and video evidence on June 17 of the military committing atrocities in a location later determined to likely be Mone Taing Pin. The cache of more than 100 photos and video clips was reportedly found by a villager on a phone in Ayadaw Township, south of Ye-U, and subsequently turned over to RFA. It is believed to have belonged to a Myanmar army soldier involved in raids in the area.

A revolutionary force in Sagaing also sent the same files to Myanmar Now on June 23.

In the now widely seen video footage, three soldiers are seen filming themselves discussing how many people they have killed, and the manner in which they dismembered their victims.

“I’m an expert in killing,” one of the men—assumed to be the phone’s owner—is heard saying.

Among the photos recovered from the phone was an image, dated May 10, of around 30 men sitting with their hands tied behind their backs in front of a wooden building, guarded by three junta soldiers.

U Win*, a 45-year-old man from Mone Taing Pin, told Myanmar Now that the photo was taken in the village’s monastery, as RFA also suggested.

“I can identify all of the people in the photo. Of all of them, I think only one survived. The rest were all killed,” he said. Mone_taing_pin_villagers.jpeg

Villagers seen being held captive by the military in what is believed to be the Mon Taing Pin monastery (Supplied)

Other photos, including one from the following day, show the soldiers standing over bloody bodies, some of which belonged to men who RFA sources identified as being present in the earlier photo of captives in the monastery.

The bodies of those killed were later burned in houses in the village, they said.

Myanmar Now previously reported that some 30 homes were torched in Mone Taing Pin during the raid, and that it appeared that the bodies of those found inside belonged to victims who had been murdered before they were burned.

“There was blood in the front of the houses, so it looks like they were killed outside and then dragged inside and set on fire,” a villager told Myanmar Now at the time.

RFA contacted the junta spokesperson Gen Zaw Min Tun regarding the evidence, but he declined to comment until the military had carried out its own investigation into the incident.

*Some names have been changed to protect the safety of the individuals

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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