Hell in a Sagaing Region village

The full moon day of the lunar month of Thadingyut, when Buddhists believe the Buddha returned to the human realm after preaching dharma for three months in Trāyastriṃśa heaven, fell on October 17 this year. Buddhists traditionally light oil lamps on the full moon night to honour and welcome the Buddha back to the realm of men. There were no such rituals on Thadingyut’s full moon day this year in Si Par, Budalin Township in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, where residents instead had to flee for their lives from junta soldiers storming their village. While most managed to escape, locals said those left behind faced a living hell in the atrocities the army troops committed against them. After setting up camp on the full moon day in Si Par village, located around four miles north of Budalin, Sagaing Region, junta soldiers brutally killed and dismembered civilians they had taken captive, according to the surviving villagers, cutting them in two at the midsection or severing their heads, legs, or arms. A woman in her 40s from Si Par described the condition of the bodies she had seen after the torture and killing. “Their faces were slashed with knives. One had his genitals cut off. All three had their limbs cut off,” the woman said. “They hung their heads on a bamboo fence and burned their bodies. They were stripped of all their clothing,” she added. The day after the full moon day, junta-controlled newspapers acknowledged their soldiers had entered Si Par village, but gave little detail about what they did there. On a sacred day, soldiers bring hell Aye Myint*, a Si Par villager in her 40s, was preparing food on the morning of the full moon day to take to the village monastery as an offering. While cooking at around 7am, she heard gunfire and fled for safety as quickly as she could. “We weren’t even able to finish boiling the eggs for the offering,” she said. The junta troops, numbering around 100, fired their rifles as they entered Si Par, a village of some 500 households four miles north of Budalin. Watching from a distance around two hours later, Aye Myint saw smoke start to rise from the south end of the village. The smoke stopped at around noon, she said, but could be seen again at 3pm, this time rising from the village’s north side. She and the other Si Par residents realised that nearly the entire village was being burned. They had to spend the rest of the full moon night in the forests and hills at what they hoped was a safe distance. The following morning, hearing word that the junta troops had left, the residents returned to Si Par and were met with a horrific shock at the village entrance. They found three villagers’ bodies dismembered and with visible gunshot wounds, Aye Myint said. She added that two of the victims were identified as Si Par residents Ya Sein and Htay Lwin—both in their 50s—and that the third was thought to have been taken hostage from elsewhere by the soldiers. An even more shocking scene awaited them at the centre of the village, where they found three beheaded bodies with their faces slashed and limbs severed next to an old, disused building. The victims found in Si Par’s centre were identified as Tet Aung, 42; Kyaung Po, also in his 40s; and Tin Hlaing, who was over 80. All three were residents of the village. In videos and photos seen by Myanmar Now, three severed heads were mounted on a bamboo fence. Two of the heads had severed limbs placed over them. Near the fence, three bodies with their limbs removed can be seen in the yard, one of them visibly burned. According to Aye Myint, Tet Aung, the 42-year-old that the junta troops killed and dismembered, was captured when he briefly returned to the village to gather herbs. “He was cooking and eating while in hiding. He went to pick some basil leaves. Even though we told him not to go, he said ‘Come on, I need to get some for the mushroom curry and eggplant curry,’” she said. While most locals had been able to flee before the junta troops arrived, some elderly residents stayed behind believing they would be safe, villagers said. “We thought they wouldn’t do anything to the elderly. But those people don’t even have human feelings,” said a member of the People's Administration Organization of Budalin Township (Budalin PAO). After leaving Si Par, the junta column raided the nearby Se Wa village, resistance forces said on October 21, adding that the bodies of two men were found there, one with severed limbs. With the junta troops now occupying Saing Pyin Lay village about a mile from Se Wa, local resistance forces and civilians have been unable to conduct a thorough search of the area, representatives of the Budalin PAO said. Army targets civilians after losing to armed resistance In late September, resistance forces intercepted and attacked a junta column of more than 80 troops in Budalin Township some 20 miles north of Monywa, Sagaing Region’s largest city and the site of the military’s Northwestern Regional Military Command (RMC) headquarters. The junta column was beaten badly and practically wiped out, with dozens of soldiers killed in the ambush and more than 40 taken prisoner. Sagaing Region residents believe the army is now capturing, killing, and mutilating civilians as a brutal revenge for that defeat. After another junta column—occupying Kun Taw village some 10 miles northwest of Si Par—incurred heavy casualties in a resistance ambush near Si Par and Kywe Thay Chaung villages in late September, locals anticipated some form of retaliation. Since the second week of October, junta army columns based at the Northwestern RMC have killed more than 20 civilians including children in Budalin Township’s urban wards and rural villages alike, resistance forces said. While the army has raided Si Par village before, they committed the worst atrocities by far during their latest assault, according to Si Par resident Aye Myint. ‘Formula for instilling fear’ Residents of Si Par and nearby villages had been on high alert since junta columns advanced into Budalin Township in the second week of October, listening for news of troop movements and staying prepared to evacuate. The troops have reportedly been abducting women and elderly people from villages along their route to use as human shields since leaving the Northwestern RMC, making it difficult for resistance forces to attack them. Although there has been no direct combat with these ground forces on their way back to Monywa, the military has nevertheless conducted airstrikes targeting Budalin Township villages and firing on them with heavy artillery, armed resistance members reported. A Budalin Township-based resistance fighter said the military was targeting civilians and their property deliberately. “It's their formula for instilling fear,” he said. The army, seeking to cut off supplies to resistance forces from what they assume to be a sympathetic civilian population, has burned down hundreds of houses during their current operations in Budalin Township. According to the Budalin Township PAO, junta ground forces’ arson attacks had destroyed nearly 500 houses in the villages they raided. When the column that raided Si Par torched houses on both the north and south sides of the village, the spreading fires destroyed some 300 of the village’s 500 homes. “They lit the fires at houses that they knew would burn most easily. They targeted houses with haystacks, cattle feed storage, and palm leaf roofs placed close enough to them for the fire to spread,” Aye Myint explained. Reports in junta-controlled media outlets acknowledged that army troops had been in Si Par village on October 17, but the military council’s ministry of information claimed on its web page on October 20 that the fires had been caused by the resistance’s shelling. The military council also claimed in the online statement that the bodies found in Si Par village were the victims of resistance forces who suspected them of working as informants for the military. “These are brutal, inhuman acts of terrorism,” the statement said. A Budalin PAO member responded that the military council’s statement was consistent with their usual “psychological warfare.” Budalin PAO members also claimed that they continued to treat captured junta soldiers humanely, including prisoners of war captured last month in Sagaing Region, despite the atrocities committed by the army. “We're not cruel like them,” one said. “If we were like them, none of them would have survived.” *Sources’ names have been changed in this story for their security.

Hell in a Sagaing Region village

Locals believe the junta forces’ burning of a Budalin Township village and killing of eight of its residents was meant as retaliatory intimidation after their failure to defeat the armed resistance in the area

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