Two former village administrators accused of acting as informants to the military council were assassinated on Monday and Wednesday in Sagaing Region’s Taze Township, according to locals.
Than Win, who had previously been the administrator for Daunggyi village, was stabbed to death on his way to an area farm at 9am on Wednesday.
Locals alleged that Than Win was a supporter of the military-proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party.
“After the coup, he cursed at people, shouting, ‘How do you like it now? What are you going to do? Come out if you want!’” a Daunggyi local told Myanmar Now on the condition of anonymity.
“People did not like him,” the local said, adding that he did not believe the person who killed Than Win was from Daunggyi but did not know where he may have come from.
Hours after his assassination, around 50 regime soldiers and police came to the village to question the residents, the local source said.
Kyaw Lwin, a former administrator from Ywar Mon Taung village, was also shot dead on Monday evening.
“He was a village administrator until 2018. Now he provides financial support to the Pyu Saw Htee group,” a local from Ywar Mon Taung told Myanmar Now, referring to a pro-military network said to have been formed to counter the anti-coup resistance movement.
“He was well known as an informant, and he got killed in the village,” the local said.
Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the local allegations surrounding Than Win and Kyaw Lwin’s alleged pro-military leanings.
Ye Tun, a military council-appointed ward administrator from Taze’s Paw Oo ward, was assassinated on June 2.
Just days after the February 1 coup, Taze became a stronghold for anti-dictatorship protests. On April 7, junta troops killed 10 locals in an attempt to suppress the resistance in the area.
Protests in the town grew quieter after the crackdown, but momentum against the coup grew in villages and rural areas.
Assassinations of alleged informants have escalated in recent weeks. Some village and ward administrators appointed by the military council have resigned from their positions out of fear that they will be targeted.
On Wednesday, three other people were assassinated for their alleged junta sympathies: an administrator from Ward 13 in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar Township, the deputy head of the education office in Kyauktan Township, and a man accused of being an informant on the Myanmar-Thai border.
