Myanmar junta detains deputy defence minister over alleged ties to online scam industry

The junta has detained and is reportedly interrogating its own deputy defence minister in Naypyitaw for his alleged involvement in online scam rings in the city of Laukkai, on the Myanmar-China border. The arrest of Gen Aung Lin Tun was allegedly carried out at the request of the Chinese authorities, making him the highest ranking member of the military council to be investigated on the issue. In the past, the junta has handed over ethnic Kokang militia leaders and pro-military political party officers to China after they were said to have been identified as facilitating the massive internet fraud industry in the Kokang region of northern Shan State. The general was last seen in public at a meeting of the central recruitment committee on conscription, of which he serves as chair, in military-controlled Naypyitaw on March 4. However, his seat was conspicuously empty at later meetings of the group. At the time of reporting, Aung Lin Tun was still named as deputy defence minister on the junta’s member list, and had not been replaced. A source close to the military suggested to Myanmar Now that Chinese officials asked the regime to investigate Aung Lin Tun during meetings in Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province, in early March, and that he was taken into custody weeks later. Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the claim. The meetings in Kunming were part of a series of gatherings of representatives of the Myanmar army and the Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed organisations—the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army—regarding a China-brokered temporary ceasefire agreed to in January between the two sides in northern Shan State after months of fierce fighting. The source also alleged that China had delivered the message to the junta regarding Aung Lin Tun through Lt-Gen Min Naing, the regime’s top ceasefire negotiator and secretary of its National Solidarity and Peacemaking Negotiation Committee. Gen Aung Lin Tun attends a meeting between UN representatives and the junta’s defence ministry in January 2024 (second from right, in military uniform) (Military Council) Their accusations supposedly came from information collected from other figures previously handed over to their custody, including Bai Suocheng, who was a former deputy commander of the Kokang MNDAA and chair of the Kokang Self-Administered Zone, and ex-parliamentarian for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. After China issued a warrant for Bai Suocheng’s arrest in December 2023 for his alleged involvement in scams perpetrated by gangs out of the Kokang regional capital of Laukkai, he was extradited to the country from Myanmar earlier this year. “China captured Bai Suocheng based on the statements given by the people they had previously captured, and they reported [what they knew] about the deputy defence minister from Bai Suocheng’s statements and those of other Kokang leaders that they had arrested,” the anonymous source said. The individual added that the military had been interrogating officers who had been stationed at the Laukkai Regional Military Command but had since been transferred elsewhere after the region came under the control of the MNDAA. Aung Lin Tun was appointed deputy minister of defence on March 11, 2021, more than one month after the military coup on February 1 that year, and has held the position ever since, while that of the defence minister has been reassigned multiple times. Prior to accepting the role, he had been the commander of Light Infantry Division 22 and the vice quartermaster general. He was sanctioned within months by the Swiss government for his alleged role in torturing and killing civilians in a junta crackdown on dissent.

Myanmar junta detains deputy defence minister over alleged ties to online scam industry

Gen Aung Lin Tun, who has held his military council position for more than three years, was reportedly named by China for participating in internet fraud schemes out of the Kokang region

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