Missing Chin State resistance fighters found dead

Two members of the Chinland Defence Force (CDF) chapter of southern Chin State’s Mindat Township went missing during a battle with junta troops on Wednesday only to be found slain the next day, the resistance group said in a statement. 

The clash took place on Wednesday morning near the village of Pa Lon Twi in the northern part of the township, where an army unit was reportedly trying to enter Mindat from Htilin, across the regional border in Magway. Fighting reportedly lasted six hours, ending at 3pm.

The CDF found the bodies of their members at noon on Thursday after the military had left Pa Lon Twi, which they occupied overnight. They noted that the individuals had suffered multiple wounds. 

Salai Ha Aum, a spokesperson for the CDF-Mindat, said it appeared that the guerrilla fighters had been taken prisoner by the occupying junta soldiers and subsequently murdered, but did not provide further details on the condition in which they were found. 

“They were killed in a very brutal manner,” he said. 

Their identities had not been released at the time of reporting. 

In a previous statement published prior to the discovery of the two bodies, the CDF-Mindat said that one of its members had been killed in Wednesday’s clash and another injured. 

Salai Ha Aum said that the resistance fighters would “not lose [their] spirit” and vowed to take further action against the junta’s forces. 

Yaw Man, a representative of the anti-coup Mindat People’s Administration Team said that there had also been several recent civilian casualties due to the military’s firing of heavy artillery shells in the township. 

A 14-year-old boy was killed in one such bombing in southern Mindat on Tuesday, the fourth death in the area this month due to artillery fire by the Mindat-based Infantry Battalion 274, according to residents. On June 16, shells fired by the battalion also reportedly killed two women and a man who were working in a farm in the village of Mwi Twi. 

The military council, which declared martial law in Mindat more than a year ago, has not released any information on the incidents.

Members of the township’s anti-coup movement were among the first in the country to take up arms against regime forces cracking down on protesters at the time, with the CDF forming in April last year. Rural Mindat remains a resistance stronghold.