In the Battle Foyer against the Myanmar junta, atrocities only raid the resolution of people to retaliate.
By RFA Burmese
October 6, 2022
In June, Radio Free Asia obtained a file of files recovered from a mobile phone found by a villager who documents the atrocities committed by government soldiers during military operations in the sagaing region torn apart by the Myanmar War. Following the horrible attacks against the village of my Ting Pin, RFA spoke to the survivors of the massacre, who described the nightmare.
In a third episode of atrocities, RFA explores how Sagaing, an agricultural region with a rich Buddhist history, has become an epicenter in the conflict between the military and anti-Junta forces, and the high price that the people of the region paid for the resistance.
During the 20 months following the soldiers took power in Myanmar, Sagaing was a center for resistance to the junta rule. The northern region of 5.3 million, mainly people of Burman, is rocked between two of the main rivers of Myanmar, Ayeyarwady and Chindwin, and extends towards the south of the Myanmar border with India in the second city in the country, Mandalay. Hosting some of the most important temples, pagodas and monasteries in the country, Sagaing was the basis of the last Burmese dynasty before the British conquest of the country in 1885.
Residents say that it was this spirit of self-determination that has made the region an anti-Junta protest center and has strengthened part of the country’s most ferocious armed resistance from the paramilitary groups of the pro-democracy (PDF) people encountered by the army since February 1, 2021. The PDF fighters, which the junta labeled “terrorists”, often confronts the army. They started their resistance with slides and the raw rifles “Tumi” that their ancestors used to fight the British at the end of the 19th century, but have since acquired better and more modern weapons. Some were acquired from allied ethnic rebel groups, others forged by villagers themselves.
Held Swe, a former legislator of the pale canton of Sagaing, told RFA that the inhabitants of the region had “a long history of engaging in war”, covering the days of ancient Burmese kings through the insurgences of the Second World War and the 20th century.
“The inhabitants of this region are now fighting the regime with persistence and courage never seen before,” he said.
“This is something very special in the inhabitants of the Sagaing region. I think it does not matter the strategy that the junta uses to try to suppress them, there is no prospect of crushing the resistance there. ”
But this resistance came with a high cost.
The junta troops bring death and destruction
Barely a week goes without reports of sagaing raids by junta troops on the villages they accuse of hosting PDF units, military actions which often involve looting, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, a criminal fire and murder. Schools and children have not been spared.
According to the United Nations, Junta’s troops have set fire to or destroy around 12,000 civil properties since taking control, although independent research groups such as Myanmar data and the strategy and policy Institute (Myanmar) have put the number in northern. More than 500,000 people were moved by sagaing conflicts during this period, says the UN.
An elderly resident of Nyaung Pin Tae Village in the canton of Chaung-U told RFA that the military raid on his region in June was not like what he had ever known.
“I heard several artillery explosions … [and] People have started to flee, “he said, adding that those who could not run were put on the back of motorcycles to escape, although at least a disabled woman was left in chaos.
“There was a child who was left because he did not want to abandon the calf to whom he tended.
The rights defense groups have asked that the junta burned earth offensive in Sagaing is investigated as war crimes before an international courtyard. The junta maintains that her soldiers do not engage in crimes on the civilian population and blame these acts on the PDF. But FRG surveys suggest the opposite.
The files on the mobile phone of a soldier of the junta found by a villager in the canton of Ayadaw, who neighbors of the canton of Ye-U, where the army had made raids, included a video that showed the owner of the phone and two other men attacating for the camera and chatting in coarse terms on death and the arrangement of the body.
Among the many images of my Taug Pin Village, he is one of the 30 men with their hands attached behind their backs on the ground of a monastery. Two of them seem to be the same men who have seen dead in the photos taken one day later on five victims executed.
A man told RFA that his brother-in-law and his two nephews were among the prisoners in the photo.
“They attached them and all owned them all … in a large piece of the monastery. They obtained five or six of them by lots and took them to the village, where they were beaten to death and thrown into houses that they then set on fire,” he said, speaking under the cover of anonymity citing the fear of reprisals.
“I think they kill people to encourage fear among PDF fighters, assuming they will go,” he said.
Another woman told RFA that her three sons had been captured and killed by the soldiers during the massacre from May 10 to 11, in which 29 men were killed.
“Not a single day happens when I don’t cry for them. My three of my three sons were killed, even if they were all innocent. We were too afraid to chat with [the soldiers]”She said.
“We live on the income of my sons. Now they have gone, ”she sobbed. “Our lives are ruined. My sons were human beings. I want to implore the military to stop the murder. I want to call on these soldier’s boys. Please have mercy. You have killed our sons, and now an elderly couple is left hungry. ”
Like other witnesses of the atrocities reported in this story, she asked for anonymity for her security.
“Resentment in our hearts has only growed greater
Despite the terror they endured, many victims of attacks during the military raids in Sagaing told RFA that with nothing to lose and little to wait, they are more resolved than ever to remove the junta from power.
Mahuyar, a member of the female PDF troop of the canton of Myaung, told RFA that she had chosen to fight against the military regime after everything she had built over the years had been destroyed during a raid.
“Our houses and properties have been burned in ashes,” she said. “Resentment in our hearts has only growed. We no longer fear them. ”
Others said they would gladly give everything they could to help armed resistance.
“When my son enlisted to join the PDF, he had no equipment,” said a woman from the canton of sagaing tabayin who gave his Daw name [honorific] MY
“I sold a diamond earring that I bought with my savings so that I can give it a Tumi rifle.”
Other sagaing residents have told RFA that morale is raised among people, who fight for their homeland, when there is an increasing feeling of despair in the row and the army file.
Ko Khant, of the canton of Yinmarbin, said that the junta “had completely lost control in our region”.
“As [the junta] Can no longer govern the region, their troops have turned to people, killing and burning their villages, “he said.
Thant Wai Kyaw, a former member of the Regional Parliament of Sagain, who began to report on the national agency of the national government of national unity after last year’s coup, said that the junta had “underestimated” the people of Sagaing.
“Although they are simple people, they do not lack courage to retaliate,” she said.
“When they see entire villages burning and people are killed, they realize that it is a moment for the real revolution. A determination that we must participate together has grown in the hearts of all – men and women, young and old. ”
Report by Khin Maung Soe, Nayrein Kyaw, Soe San Aung and RFA Birmanse Service
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