A civilian villager died when junta soldiers shot at funeral attendees on Thursday morning in a village in Myaung Township, southern Sagaing Region, according to local residents.
At around 5am, some 20 junta soldiers came to a house in Na Nwin Kaing village, 16 miles southwest of Myaung, where a wake was being held for a 70-year-old woman who had died of natural causes. Villagers were playing cards, a custom at wakes, at an adjacent Buddhist community centre.
A man living in the village said that the soldiers shot repeatedly at nine young men who were playing cards at the Buddhist community hall until they ran out of bullets.
“The funeral was held at the community hall as it’s located right beside the deceased woman’s house. The boys tried to run in a panic, and the military yelled at them not to run and shot at them until they ran out of ammunition. One was killed on the spot and collapsed,” said the man, who requested anonymity out of concern for his security.
The victim was Thein Kyaw, a 30-year-old father of two children. Along with other local people, he had been helping with the funeral preparations.
In November of last year, the military carried out an arson assault on Na Nwin Kaing, a village of more than 300 households, that destroyed more than 90 villagers’ houses, including the home of the deceased woman.
After the shooting, the soldiers took petrol from a generator outside the funeral home, forced two young villagers to carry Thein Kyaw’s body, and left the village with it. Local residents, accompanied by monks, later requested that the soldiers return the body, and brought it back into the village.
“They finally let us take the body back after the monks pleaded with them,” the local man said.
“It seems they wanted to get rid of the body as they had also asked for petrol at the deceased woman’s home. When they said they didn’t have any, they got some out of the generator in front of the house.”
The two young men who had been forced to carry Thein Kyaw’s body were also released, but only after being badly beaten, with one sustaining a serious head injury.
According to the leader of a locally active defence team, the soldiers told the monks that they had attacked the Buddhist community hall because they did not realise that the purpose of the gathering was a funeral.
“They said they wouldn’t have come if the community notified them that they were in mourning. But how can we be expected to excuse them shooting a young man dead for no reason at all?” the defence team leader said.
A notorious junta force known as the “Ogre Column” terrorised Myaung and neighbouring townships in southern Sagaing Region in March of this year, massacring civilians and resistance fighters alike, then mutilating their bodies.
