Myanmar police in Lashio to investigate deaths of two civilians

2016-07-05

Villagers carry the corpse of a civilian found in a shallow grave in Mong Yaw subtownship, Myanmar's northern Shan state, June 30, 2016. RFA

The parents of two of the seven villagers killed by a Myanmar army battalion in northern Shan state last week filed a missing persons report with police in Lashio township on Sunday, launching an official investigation of the incident, said a lawmaker who has taken up the cause of the victims' family.

Two brothers – Naw Tin, 33, and Sai Hla, 30 – were killed on June 25 as they rode motorbikes through Mong Yaw subtownship. Five other unarmed civilians were shot dead near a cornfield in Long Mon village, where some of them were working.

Villagers who found the seven bodies in three shallow graves on June 30 believe that government army soldiers who were seen detaining the local citizens later killed them.

The villagers determined that the corpses were those of two men whom soldiers had taken from a cornfield in Long Mon village, three ethnic Palaung (Ta'ang) men who had ridden motorbikes to the cornfield, and an unidentified man and woman who had passed along the road beside the field.

Local reports issued later said only two men on motorbikes had been shot dead for failing to stop at a checkpoint.

Sai Wan Hlaing Kham, an upper house lawmaker from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) party, is helping the family members of the two brothers who were killed find out why they were shot.

"We went to the police station and met with the head police officer," he told RFA's Myanmar Service. "He told us that he would submit the case to higher district and county police administrators."

Soon after Sai Wan Hlaing Kham and the others left, they received a phone call from the police station, he said.

"[We] were told that the district police administrator asked the parents [of the two dead boys] to file the case as a missing persons case, so the parents of the two victims went to the station and filed a missing persons case," he said.

Bodies belong to the TNLA

A report by military-owned news outlet Myawaddy on July 1 said the corpses of the five exhumed men belonged to TNLA rebels, and that government soldiers troops found two other dead bodies belonging to the TNLA along with heroin and amphetamine tablets, according to a report by Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma.

So far, police have not looked into the matter because officials said no report had been filed by any of the victims' family members, and they had to defer to the military because the incident occurred in a conflict zone.

The military has said it will investigate the murder of the seven villagers.

A Myanmar army deputy regional commander visited the families of five of the victims in Mong Yaw on Sunday and gave each a "donation" of 300,000 kyats (U.S. $257), according to local media reports.

Shan, Palaung and Kachin youth organization based in Lashio issued a joint statement on Monday condemning the killings and blaming the Myanmar army for attacking innocent civilians and endangering the country's peace process, according to a report by the online journal The Irrawaddy.

President Htin Kyaw has made peace and national reconciliation a cornerstone of the new government which came into power in April.

Rights groups have accused both government troops and ethnic rebel soldiers of human rights violations in Shan state, including kidnapping, torturing, and killing civilians, and forcing them to work as laborers.

Reported by Kyaw Thu for RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Link to original story on RFA website