A former Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) Lower House parliamentarian for Bago Region’s Thegon Township was fatally shot at 6:30am on Thursday.
The anti-junta Wisdom Group—the name for the Pyay District People’s Defence Force’s (PDF) Battalion 3601, Unit 3, Platoon 3—claimed responsibility for the assassination of the ex-legislator, Soe Aung, near the market in Thegon town where he had recently opened a large store.
“We shot him three times and he died on the spot. Two shots to the abdomen and one to the head,” a member of the group said.
Junta-linked social media pages reported that Soe Aung suffered a serious bullet wound to the neck and died upon arrival at a local hospital.
In a statement released after his murder, Wisdom Group alleged that Soe Aung, who became an MP representing the army proxy after Myanmar’s military-controlled election in 2010, most recently had taken on the role of local leader to the junta-backed Pyu Saw Htee militia. The resistance force said that he was involved in recruiting new personnel for the armed group.
Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the allegations against Soe Aung.
While he had previously served as the chair of the USDP’s Thegon chapter, it was not known if he was still an active party member at the time of his death.
In recent months, the junta had organised a large number of militia members in Pyay and Taungoo townships and in and around Thegon town, including by hosting official ceremonies in September in which they gifted some 200 people in the Pyu Saw Htee with rifles and other weapons to fight the anti-coup resistance.
The USDP has been supportive of the February 2021 coup in which the military rejected the results of the 2020 general election that saw the National League for Democracy win a majority of seats and the USDP defeated. Members of the military-allied party have since been targeted by armed resistance groups, who have also assassinated other suspected army informants and allies.
On June 26, a retired police inspector believed to be a junta informant was injured, alongside a police officer on active duty, in a PDF attack in Thegon. Another policeman was killed on April 19 by the PDF in the township after he reportedly opened fire on the resistance fighters trying to arrest him.
PDF operations particularly in western Bago have escalated since late 2022 as the resistance group, which follows the mandate of the National Unity Government, also coordinates with the ethnic armed organisation the Karen National Union, which is active in the area.
