IDPs return to Karenni towns to find unidentified bodies in streets, schools

Displaced people found nearly two dozen unidentified bodies when they returned to towns in Karenni (Kayah) and southern Shan states earlier this week after being forced to flee to rural areas by fighting between junta forces and local resistance groups. 

Some of the region’s estimated 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) returned to their homes in Kayah State’s Demoso Township and Shan State’s Pekhon Township after a temporary ceasefire was declared by the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) on June 15. The declaration followed talks with military and religious leaders late last week. 

Many who had sheltered in forests and nearby villages returned to find their homes destroyed and their possessions looted by regime troops. Others made even worse discoveries.

Corpses were seen in the streets, in residential and school compounds, local humanitarian workers and officials from an ethnic armed organisation told Myanmar Now. 

A volunteer from a group supporting the IDPs said that 12 bodies were found around Daw Ngan Khar ward and near Ngwe Taung dam in Demoso, and seven bodies were found in the town of Moebye in Pekhon Township. 

The Kayah State-based Kantarawaddy Times reported that the skeletal remains of four bodies were found inside the compound of a local high school in Ngwe Taung ward on Thursday. Photos of the bones indicated that the victims had been tied with rope and killed.

Arrangements were made for other bodies found in Demoso to be cremated.

An official from the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), a local ethnic armed group, estimated that around 50 civilians had been killed by the junta’s army during recent clashes. 

“The army fired heavy artillery and those who did not escape or who were trapped were killed. Many people died. Unidentified bodies were rotting and dogs had pulled at the bodies,” the KNPP official said.  

Clashes between local civilian resistance forces and the military ignited in late May, with the fighting spreading to several townships in Kayah State and across the border in southern Shan State.