BANGKOK, 6 Mar: Soldiers in Myanmar rampaged through several villages, raping, beheading and killing at least 17 people, residents said, in the latest of what critics of the ruling military say are a series of war crimes since the army seized power two years ago.
\nThe bodies of 17 people were recovered last week in the villages of Nyaung Yin and Tar Taing \u2014 also called Tatai \u2014 in Sagaing region in central Myanmar, according to members of the anti-government resistance and a resident who lost his wife. They said the victims had been detained by the military and in some cases appeared to have been tortured before being killed.
\nMyanmar has been in turmoil since the military\u2019s February 2021 seizure of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi prompted nationwide peaceful protests that security forces suppressed with deadly force. The violence triggered widespread armed resistance, which has since turned into what some U.N. experts have characterized as a civil war.
\nThe army has been conducting major offensives in the countryside, including burning villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. It has faced some of its toughest resistance in Sagaing, in Myanmar\u2019s historic heartland.
\nThe soldiers involved in last week\u2019s attacks were in a group of more than 90 who were brought to the area by five helicopters on Feb. 23, said local leaders of the pro-democracy People\u2019s Defense Forces and independent Myanmar media.
\nThey said the bodies of 14 people, including three women, were found Thursday on a small island in a river in Nyaung Yin. Three more male victims were found in Tar Taing, including two members of the local resistance. One of the two was dismembered, with his head cut off, they said.
\nThe neighboring villages are about 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of the major city of Mandalay.
\nTar Taing resident Moe Kyaw, 42, survived the attack but said his 39-year-old wife, Pan Thwal, and 18-year-old nephew were among those killed. Contacted by phone, he said Friday they were among 70 villagers detained in the middle of the night last Wednesday by soldiers who shot into the air as they herded their captives from their homes to the local Buddhist monastery.
\nMoe Kyaw said the soldiers stole beer and other items from his aunt\u2019s small shop, and as they beat her, he fled for his life, escaping two soldiers who shot at him.
\nHe said his wife and other villagers were tortured at the monastery and then taken away from the village, apparently as hostages against any attack. He said his wife and two other women were beaten, raped and shot dead on Thursday by the soldiers, who also took his spouse\u2019s earrings, His two sons, 9 and 11 years old, were released when the soldiers departed, he said.
\nMoe Kyaw did not explain how he knew the details about his wife\u2019s treatment.
\nMyanmar\u2019s underground National Unity Government \u2014 the main organization opposed to military rule that describes itself as the country\u2019s legitimate government \u2014 said in an online news conference on Monday that the soldiers were from the 99th Light Infantry Division based in Mandalay Region.
\nA leader of a Sagaing resistance group called the Demon King Defense Force said his group attacked the better-armed government troops on Wednesday in a failed effort to rescue the detained villagers.
\nWhen they went Thursday morning to the small island where the soldiers had taken about 20 villagers they found 14 bodies in three spots, said the resistance leader, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals by the military.
\nAcknowledging that he had not seen the killings, he said he also believed the women had been raped.
\nIn an earlier incident apparently involving the same army unit, two boys aged 12 and 13 assisting the People\u2019s Defense Force were captured by government troops on Feb. 26 and beheaded after being forced to show the locations of their camps, according to independent Myanmar media. Photos said to be of their bodies, found at Kan Daw village, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) northwest of Tar Taing, were circulated on social media.
\nA separate group, the Sadaung Lighting People\u2019s Defense Force, has said that two of its older teenage members were also killed and beheaded in fighting at Kan Daw on the same day.
\nThe military government has not responded to the allegations. In the past, it has denied documented abuses and said that casualties occurred in the course of fighting against armed anti-government guerrillas. Online media supportive of the military government have made the same claim about the recent incidents in Sagaing or suggested that they were the result of factional fighting within the resistance.
\nMyanmar\u2019s military has long been accused of serious human rights violations, most notably in the western state of Rakhine. International courts are considering whether it committed genocide there in a brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign that caused more than 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to neighboring Bangladesh for safety.
\nLast week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T\u00fcrk accused the ruling generals of carrying out \u201ca scorched earth policy in an attempt to stamp out opposition.\u201d
\nHis agency said credible sources have verified the deaths of at least 2,940 civilians and 17,572 arrests by the military and its allies since the 2021 takeover. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BANGKOK, 6 Mar: Soldiers in Myanmar rampaged through several villages, raping, beheading and killing at least 17 people, residents said, in the latest of what critics of the ruling military say are a series of war crimes since the army seized power two years ago. The bodies of 17 people were recovered last week in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}