Myanmar gangster and junta collaborator murdered in Yangon

One of Myanmar’s most notorious criminals—who in the final year of his life also found a role as leader of a pro-junta militia—was brutally murdered in Yangon on Friday. Kyaw Win Sein, aged around 53, had spent most of his adult life behind bars for committing a long list of criminal offences, including robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and battery. Most recently arrested in 2016, he was serving a sentence of more than 70 years when he was freed from Yangon’s Insein Prison during one of last year’s mass amnesties—which saw the release of thousands of ordinary convicts, but only a handful of political detainees. According to police sources, soon after returning to the streets of Yangon, Kyaw Win Sein was assigned to lead a 50-member group of fellow criminals tasked with rooting out anti-junta urban guerrillas. The group, which was formed as a unit of the Pyu Saw Htee—a militia established and armed by the military after the 2021 coup—was active in Shwepyitha, an industrial township in the northwestern outskirts of Yangon. On Friday night, Kyaw Win Sein and three of his associates were in Yangon’s Kyimyindaing Township, where they had an argument with another criminal gang that escalated into a violent fight that ended with him being stabbed repeatedly in the back and neck. A video of the scene shared with Myanmar Now by a police source showed him being dragged by his feet, wounded but still alive, by a group of men armed with swords. He can be heard appealing for his life, shouting, “That’s enough, guys.” After this, he was stabbed again until his assailants were sure that he was dead. According to the police source, none of Kyaw Win Sein’s attackers have been arrested, and his associates also managed to escape. Kyaw Win Sein’s body was taken by police to Yangon General Hospital late Friday night. “The hardened criminals like him are now assisting security forces, doing things like checking suspected vehicles or gathering intelligence on urban guerrilla groups. Ward administrators or police may control them, but only from behind the scenes,” the police source added. Aung Soe, a former criminal turned vocal critic of the military junta, said he carried out a series of robberies in Yangon with Kyaw Win Sein more than 20 years ago and spent years inside Insein Prison together with him. “Kyaw Win Sein is the kind of guy who would do anything for money. I hired him in the late 1990s to do some robberies because he was a good driver,” said Aung Soe, who now lives on the Thai-Myanmar border, where he raises funds for the anti-junta resistance movement. After his release from prison last year, Kyaw Win Sein also gained a following on the popular social media app TikTok, uploading videos of himself spouting obscenities, posing with members of his gang, and otherwise exemplifying the thug life. Screenshots of videos posted by Kyaw Win Sein on Tiktok, which often featured him hurling abusive language (Myanmar Now) Myanmar’s military has a long history of using criminals and thugs to crack down on its political opponents. An investigation by Myanmar Now in 2015 revealed how the authorities were using thugs during crackdowns on student protests and labour strikes in Yangon. Since the February 2021 coup, however, the regime has gone to even greater lengths to bolster the strength of its militias. It is especially strong in Sagaing Region—also a major centre of the anti-junta resistance—recruiting not only criminals, but also army veterans and members of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. Official documents obtained by Myanmar Now showed that Pyu Saw Htee units are directly trained and supervised by battalion-level army officers and officials of the General Administrative Department, which is under the control of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Myanmar gangster and junta collaborator murdered in Yangon

Kyaw Win Sein also had a following on TikTok as an exemplar of the Burmese version of the thug life

Subscribe for full access

After 100 days of ‘civilian’ rule, Myanmar remains a bastion of oppression

‘We cannot write as before’: Women poets of Myanmar’s Spring Revolution

Sent to die: Myanmar’s conscripts caught between a junta’s war and a nation’s collapse

Magway emerges as key front in junta’s strategy to claw back control of western Myanmar

Subscribe for full access

Related Articles

Egg prices hit record highs in Myanmar as shortages disrupt sales

Scam losses in Asian regions up to $114 bn in 2025: UN

Flooding in Myanmar’s jade-mining hub kills toddler, affects about 5,000 people

Myanmar’s future, Mideast fighting hang over ASEAN talks