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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 […]

Junta troops kill 9 unarmed civilians, including 4 teens, in war-torn Sagaing region

July 1, 2022/in News

The group was detained while enroute to receive medical training in a nearby township. Junta troops in Myanmar’s embattled Sagaing region captured and killed nine unarmed civilians, including four teenagers, as they traveled to receive medical training, according to an official from their group and a family member of one of the victims. The nine […]

Survivors haunted by Myanmar army massacre in Sagaing

July 3, 2022/in News

Junta troops kill 9 unarmed civilians, including 4 teens, in war-torn Sagaing region

July 1, 2022/in News

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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

Junta troops kill 9 unarmed civilians, including 4 teens, in war-torn Sagaing region

July 1, 2022/in News

The group was detained while enroute to receive medical training in a nearby township.

Junta troops in Myanmar’s embattled Sagaing region captured and killed nine unarmed civilians, including four teenagers, as they traveled to receive medical training, according to an official from their group and a family member of one of the victims.

The nine medics with the Wetlet township branch of the Generation Z Special Task Force, an organization aligned with the anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary group, were detained by the military, and shot dead on Wednesday near Shwebo township’s Kunseik village while enroute to southeastern Sagaing’s Ayadaw township, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) away.

A spokesman for the Generation Z Special Task Force told RFA Burmese that those killed included four women: Pa Pa Khine, 14, Win Ei Kyaw, 15, Naing Naing Aung, 24, and Thit Thit Hlaing, 34; and five men: Pho Htaung, 17, Phone Kyaw, 17, Thein Than Oo, 21, Aung Kyaw Moe, 27, and Pho Nyein, 27.

The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that his group confirmed the identities of the victims after obtaining photos of the slaughter.

“They didn’t have any weapons on them. They were going for medical training in an area where there was no fighting,” he said.

“We sent for them after notifying our allied groups as there were no military activities around here [and could safely return]. We have no idea how they got captured. We heard about some arrests [on Wednesday] and only [on Thursday], when we saw the photos, did we realize they were our team members.”

The mother of one victim said she was devastated by the news that her daughter and her friends were killed at such a young age.

“She wanted to do this, even though she was so young. She always said that she wanted to have a role she could play,” said the victim’s mother, who also declined to be named.

“Now that this has happened, I’m heartbroken. I’m so numb and I feel like I have nothing inside.”

The junta has yet to comment on the incident and calls by RFA to junta deputy information minister, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, went unanswered on Thursday.

The Generation Z Special Task Force said it will work to obtain justice for the families of the victims of the extrajudicial killings and to bring international attention to the incident with the help of Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government.

According to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, security forces have killed at least 2,053 civilians since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup, although the group acknowledges its records are incomplete and says the real number of deaths is likely much higher.

Last month, the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP), a local think tank, said in a report that it had documented at least 5,646 civilian deaths in Myanmar between the coup and May 10.

The ISP figure included people killed by security forces during anti-junta protests, in clashes between the military and pro-democracy paramilitaries or ethnic armies, while held in detention, and in revenge attacks, including against informers for the regime.

At least 1,831 civilians were killed in shooting deaths, the largest number of which occurred in Sagaing region, where junta troops have faced some of the toughest resistance to military rule in clashes with the PDF paramilitaries that have displaced tens of thousands of residents since the coup, the ISP report said.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

RFA News

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

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