Anti-junta forces target junta prison facilities

Resistance fighters say they are battling to overrun the main prison in Loikaw, Karenni State, weeks after anti-junta armed groups attacked regime labour camps in other parts of the country. Clashes have been ongoing since Karenni forces initiated attacks on junta targets in Loikaw on November 11, resistance groups said, adding that they have maintained control over half the area of the Karenni State capital even after the junta carried out a series of airstrikes and indiscriminate artillery attacks on the city. Personnel working for the junta’s prison department have been fighting alongside regime forces during the battle for the Loikaw prison, according to the anti-junta forces. One prison staff member, assistant supervisor Lwin Paing Soe, was killed in the fighting in mid-November, according to an officer in the prison department. Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the claim. Several political prisoners were believed to have been incarcerated in Loikaw prison, but a source within the prison system told Myanmar Now that all of the site’s inmates had been transferred to Taunggyi, in neighbouring Shan State, after clashes escalated last month. Photos received by Myanmar Now showed a building inside the prison compound riddled with bullet holes and another building with sandbags stacked high against its walls. A wall in Loikaw prison pockmarked with bullet holes following the clashes between anti-junta groups and the military troops at the prison in November (Myanmar Now) Seven prison camps have fallen to resistance forces, including three in Sagaing Region’s Tamu and Kalay townships and four in northern Shan State’s Nawnghkio Township. Personnel at the Nawnghkio prison camps surrendered to members of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Mandalay People’s Defence Force (PDF) on November 19. A camp in Thanan village, Tamu Township, was seized by the Kuki National Army three days later. An alliance of fighters from the All Burma Students Defence Force, various ethnic armed organisations, and PDF battalions commanded by the publicly mandated National Unity Government also seized two prison camps in the village of Yar Za Gyo, Kalay Township on November 3. Early last year, 11 prison personnel were killed in an attack by the Tamu PDF on the Oak Pho Kanbaung prison labour camp near the India-Myanmar border. The prison department is currently headed by Myo Swe, a former army officer appointed to the position of director-general by the junta in July. Even prior to Myanmar’s 2021 coup, all departments under the home affairs ministry, including the prison unit, operated under the direct control of the army as is prescribed by the country’s military-drafted 2008 Constitution.

Anti-junta forces target junta prison facilities

As Karenni groups attack Loikaw’s main prison, prison staff surrender seven labour camps to anti-junta fighters in Sagaing Region and northern Shan State

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