Details emerge on junta’s massacre of civilians in Sagaing Region’s Myinmu Township

Kan Kaung, a 37-year-old civilian man from Myinmu Township, Sagaing Region, quickly hid under a low bed as soldiers entered the monastery where he was hiding with around fifty fellow villagers. On that morning, May 11, a column of around 100 junta troops had initiated a raid on the township’s Let Htoke Taw village—located on the northwest bank of the Ayeyarwady and ten miles west of Myinmu—they had quickly moved towards the monastery compound, correctly guessing they would find any residents there who had not already left the village. The village’s residents had either fled to the nearby forest or sought refuge at the monastery after hearing gunfire earlier that morning, Kan Kaung recalled. Kan Kaung’s wife had opted to stay in the village, believing that escaping to the forest would put their infant child at risk. Although Kan Kaung believed he would be safer in the forest, he stopped at the monastery to check on his wife and child. He had the misfortune to be there when the junta forces arrived. Kan Kaung says he heard the door open and saw that some of the soldiers were wearing uniforms while others were in jeans or other plain clothes. They did not see Kan Kaung hiding under the bed. “Where is Maung Nyan’s team? Where are the PDF?” the soldiers demanded, referring to the fighters of the People’s Defence Forces, an armed resistance group. “Where are the weapons?” According to Kan Kaung, people told the soldiers they had come to the monastery for safety after hearing gunfire but knew nothing else. In response, the soldiers ordered all the men in the monastery building to go outside. Within a few minutes, Kan Kaung began to hear repeated gunshots from outside. The men who had just been in the building with him were being shot dead in cold blood. Some 50 people had sought refuge in the monastery. The soldiers took about half of them outside, all men, and massacred them. “I couldn't see it as it was happening, but I could hear everything from inside the monastery. After most of the guns had gone silent, I heard the junta soldiers saying one of the people they shot was still moving, and I heard another gunshot as they killed him,” Kan Kaung said. He heard the slain men’s daughters, wives, and relatives—who were still huddled inside the monastery—begin to cry. Bodies of the villagers from Let Htoke Taw placed in a truck for removal. (Photo-Supplied) Retaliation for a resistance ambush “In the days leading up to the massacre, junta soldiers were hurt when the local resistance forces ambushed their unit. One of the two soldiers is a retired military officer aged over 60 who has been recalled to the army,” Kan Kaung said. The soldiers had told villagers they came to retaliate after three of their three soldiers were shot, including an officer returning to service under the newly reactivated reserve forces law, he added. “They told us not to fight them, saying that otherwise the entire village would be incinerated,” Kan Kaung said. “They threatened that If we attacked them again, they would kill everyone in the village including the women.” Maung Nyan, the man the soldiers had asked for by name, is a leader of the People’s Defence Organisation (PDO) resistance fighters based in Let Htoke Taw village. He is in his 30s. "They had a vendetta against me because of the operations I have carried out,” he told Myanmar Now. “My name came to their attention; they know who attacked them. I feel disheartened.” The group led by Maung Nyan attacked junta troops twice, killing three soldiers and wounding two others, according to Nyan. “On the Chaung-U road, we fired on the army convoy coming from Wanbao,” he said, referring to a copper mining project in Salingyi Township. “Three of [the soldiers] died.”“We engaged in a clash with their hidden guards and opened fire, hitting and injuring two of them. They were furious and determined to retaliate,” he added. Troops of Sagaing-based People’s Defense Organisation (PDO) in early April this year (Photo – PDO) Day of the massacre Let Htoke Taw—a large village with more than 700 houses—is located 12 miles west of Myinmu, near the Mandalay-Monywa road. At around 1am on May 11, word reached the villagers in Let Htoke Taw that a column of around 100 soldiers was advancing towards them from the military camp in Chaung-U Township’s Nat Yae Kan village, located some three miles to the west. Hearing the news, local resistance groups blew a horn to sound the alarm in the village and warn people to flee, a local resistance fighter said. He added that some villagers chose not to flee Let Htoke Taw and instead sheltered in one of the village’s monasteries, one of which is located on the west side of the village and one on the east side. Those who stayed in the monasteries would later have to meet the soldiers face to face. “Most of them fled into the forest, but some couldn’t. Some fled the village, then returned. Elderly people went to the nearest monastery for shelter. Then the junta column arrived in the village around 5am," said the local resistance fighter, who asked not to be named and said he was not speaking on behalf a particular group. At 5am the troops in the column began setting fire to houses in Let Htoke Taw. After they left the village around an hour and a half later, resistance groups saw that many of the village’s houses had been destroyed. The resistance members added that they were unable to put out the last of the fires until Monday, two days after the raid. The exact number of houses burned by the soldiers is still unknown. “Houses in this village have been set on fire before, too,” the local resistance fighter said. “This time both the old houses and the new, makeshift houses put up to replace them were destroyed indiscriminately. Houses burned all over the village.” Residents were able to count the victims after the junta column left. The local resistance fighter said 25 bodies were found outside the monastery on the east side of the village—where Kan Kaung had been hiding—while five bodies were found at the western monastery and the body of a woman was found with gunshot wounds elsewhere in the village. Locals took two injured victims from the scene of the the massacre at the eastern monastery to the hospital, and one of them died on the way. Two days after the massacre, an elderly woman’s body was found the rubble of a burnt house, bringing the death toll to 33. Myanmar Now has yet to verify names, ages, and other information about the victims. Scene from Let Htoke Taw village (Photo-Supplied) While locals said the bodies of the five victims found at Let Htoke Taw’s western monastery had burns, no one has yet come forward with a first-hand account detailing of how they were killed. The 25 victims at the eastern monastery compound were killed about ten paces from the monastery building where they had been hiding, according to Kan Kaung and another villager who survived. Miraculous survival The only survivor of the massacre at the eastern monastery apart from Kan Kaung was a man in his 40s who asked to remain anonymous. He said that when the soldiers ordered it, he exited the monastery along with all the other men hiding inside. "At that time, it was still dark inside the building. We saw that it was dawn only after we were forced outside,” he said. The soldiers made the village men gather in one place on the monastery compound and sit still, he said, adding that he could hear the soldiers' voices but could not make out their words as they started to move among the seated men. He soon heard the first gunshot, which made his ears ring. In fear, he crouched low to the ground and fell face forward. As the sounds of gunfire continued, the bodies of his neighbours fell on top of him. “People were collapsing on me. I don't know how long the soldiers were shooting. I didn't even dare breathe," he said. “I felt as though my death had come. I could hear the gunshots: bang… bang!” he said. Although he was petrified with fear, he remained alert as the bodies piled up on him. The thought came to him that if the soldiers decided to burn the bodies, there would be escape for him. “In that moment, I accepted that I was about to die. I recited the prayers in my head, I accepted my imminent death, and I gave up any effort to resist,” he said. As the gunfire subsided and the soldiers left, the women who remained inside the monastery building came out and began to look through bodies, crying as they examined the horrific scene. When they found out the man was still alive, they urged to him to flee. Kan Kaung, who had remained inside the monastery, also emerged from his hiding place at around 7am. After removing his white shirt to make himself less visible, he fled, moving east towards the forest and hiding in the underbrush when he could, he recalled. The junta column, fearing an ambush as they left the village, took a number of women as hostages. Kan Kaung’s wife, who had been hiding in the monastery with him, was among them. The soldiers torched houses on their back through Let Htoke Taw, stopped to regroup at the western monastery, and then set off on the return journey to their base in Nat Yae Kan. When Kan Kaung heard the hostages had been released, he contacted and then reunited with his family. “They thought I was dead. They didn’t know that I had been hiding. They were crying, thinking that I had been killed. Soldiers took them hostage and then burned the village while they watched,” Kan Kaung told Myanmar Now. A woman watching over the bodies of massacred villagers in Let Htoke Taw. (Photo-Supplied) Kan Kaung and the other survivor said they were grateful to have escaped with their lives but were devastated by the deaths of their neighbours. A 13-year-old child and four elderly men were among those killed at the monastery, according to a resistance member who recently arrived in Let Htoke Taw to investigate after the raid. “They detained the people who had fled to the monastery and murdered all the men. There were 60- to 80-year-old men among the victims, as well as one woman. The bodies were all found in one small area on the monastery compound," the resistance member said. He confirmed that the bodies showed injuries consistent with close-range gunshot wounds to the head. On May 12, the publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG)—a shadow cabinet opposed to Myanmar’s military regime—announced that the military’s massacre of civilians in Let Htoke Taw constituted a crime against humanity. The perpetrators included members of Light Infantry Battalion 13, part of Light Infantry Division 33, as well as Field Engineer Battalion 909, Support and Communications Battalion 929, and local, junta-trained Pyu Saw Htee militias made up of retired soldiers. The NUG said they were collecting detailed records about the massacre and will pursue justice. Additionally, they urged the international community to take effective action as the Myanmar military continues to evade accountability or punishment. The junta has released no statement acknowledging the killings in Myinmu Township. Myanmar Now attempted to contact Nyunt Win Aung, the military regime’s minister of social affairs and a spokesperson for the junta administration in Sagaing Region, but received no response. Massacres near Myinmu The massacre in Let Htoke Taw is only one of the mass killings of civilians perpetrated by the Myanmar military since armed resistance groups arose throughout the country in response to the 2021 military coup. Several such incidents of gruesome violence have taken place in or near Sagaing Region’s Myinmu Township, a stronghold for the armed resistance. In January 2022, the Myanmar army committed a massacre and arson attack in Pa Dat Taing, a large village with more than 2,500 inhabitants, located some 13 miles from Myinmu. More than 20 people were killed, of whom only ten could be identified. In February 2023 five resistance fighters were beheaded or dismembered when junta troops raided the village again. Only a few days later about 17 local people in Tar Taing village, located in Sagaing Township on the border with Myinmu Township, were killed by junta forces. In March, 10 locals were killed by the junta army in Let Ka Pin village on the border between Myinmu and Myaung townships. Bodies of those who were killed by the junta army in early March 2023 in Tartaing village, Sagaing Region in the township of the same name.(Photo: Supplied) In September of last year, junta forces killed 26 resistance fighters detained near the village of Chay Yar Taw on the border between Myaung and Myinmu townships. The town of Myinmu is in a flat area on the north bank of the Ayeyarwaddy River, 33 miles west of Mandalay, where the Myanmar army’s central regional military command headquarters is located, and 30 miles east of Sagaing Region’s administrative capital Monywa, the site of the northwestern regional military command headquarters. As the armed resistance mobilised in Myanmar in response to the 2021 military coup, Myinmu served as a strategic stopover base for resistance forces from both Sagaing and Mandalay regions.

Details emerge on junta’s massacre of civilians in Sagaing Region’s Myinmu Township

Two surviving villagers from Let Htoke Taw village told Myanmar Now about the killings they witnessed, which the NUG is investigating as a crime against humanity

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