Myanmar junta troops and militia members filmed burning resistance fighters alive

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of extreme violence that may be disturbing for some readers. We advise discretion in reading this content. Two young men struggle in iron chains, hanging from a tree over a blazing fire, covered in blood. They sway and groan as they are consumed by the flames, burning alive. A three-minute video filmed by the perpetrators—identified as members of the military-backed Pyu Saw Htee militia and the Myanmar army—captures the agonising final moments of Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung. Both 20 years old, they were members of the Yaw Defence Force (YDF), an anti-junta resistance group active in Magway Region’s Gangaw Township, where they were captured and killed in the junta-controlled village of Myauk Khin Yan on November 7 last year. While images of the scene first appeared on pro-military Telegram channels soon after their arrest, it was not until three months later, on February 6, that filmed footage of the men’s torture and murder was shared on the social media platform by local news outlet Khit Thit Media before being circulated widely by other users. In the early morning hours of November 7, joint resistance forces in the Yaw region—centred in Magway Region’s Gangaw District, near the Chin Hills—launched a calculated ambush of Myauk Khin Yan. The 1,000-household village is occupied by the notorious Pyu Saw Htee militia and Myanmar army troops and located along the road to the Sagaing town of Kalay. The guerrilla fighters recalled stealthily approaching the community in three groups, taking note of the fortified military trenches, and more than a dozen security guard posts set up around the area. Suddenly, one of the advancing resistance units was met with gunfire, indicating that the junta forces inside were expecting them. “There was an information leak, and the enemy took the initiative,” YDF chair Yaw Lay told Myanmar Now. “We faced their gunshots. We retreated without engaging in combat. They had received information in advance and were prepared [for our arrival]. As a result, our side suffered casualties from the ensuing massive attack.” Three resistance fighters and one civilian were killed at the scene, and two YDF fighters were captured that day: Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung. YDF members Phoe Tay (left) and Tha Htaung (right) are pictured on November 7, 2023 after being arrested by the junta troops and the Pyu Saw Htee militia in Myauk Khin Yan village, Gangaw Township, before later being murdered (Pro-military Telegram channels) ‘We will kill, cook, and eat them’ Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung joined the resistance movement as teenagers after participating in public demonstrations against the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar. Tha Htaung had previously worked as a farmer, and Phoe Tay was known for earning two distinctions after recently passing his high school matriculation exams. An information officer for the YDF described both men as possessing significant combat experience and “prioritising the well-being of the people over their own lives.” Residents of Myauk Khin Yan who later escaped the village said that after their arrest, the two detained YDF fighters were taken to a hospital compound by Pyu Saw Htee members wearing military uniforms. There, they were subsequently tortured and killed. In one 46-second video clip taken that day and released this week, the young men are seen with their hands and legs shackled while other men in military uniforms kick and swear at them, forcing them to shout “the uprising must fail,” and to describe resistance fighters as “dogs.” Another clip lasting nearly 50 seconds shows the pair covered in blood, being dragged down a paved road with their limbs chained. In a screengrab from a video blurred by Myanmar Now due to its disturbing nature, Tha Htaung (back, in red) and Phoe Tay (front), are seen chained and dragged along a road before being burned alive on November 7, 2023 (Screengrab) One of the locals present on November 7 was a 50-year-old woman who fled one month after the murders. She told Myanmar Now that she heard the militia members urging villagers to send at least one person from each household to watch the abuse and murder of Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung. “They shouted that the YDF had attacked the village, and that, in response to this injustice, ‘we will cook and eat them,’” she recalled. “They called for the entire village to come out and witness it. I refrained, but I saw a large crowd arriving in cars.” Those who willingly attended were military supporters, the woman said, adding that they had applauded the violence. “I heard them shouting, ‘we will kill, cook, and eat them.’ Some danced.” Perhaps the most disturbing of the three videos is the final one, three minutes and seven seconds long. In it, the victims are chained, hung from an acacia tree, with a fire set below. When one of the young men begs to be released, bystanders are heard jeering, “We will put you down if you die.” As the men struggle vigorously against the rising smoke, another man splashes them with a liquid believed to be petrol, and they are engulfed in flames. Onlookers are seen and heard clapping and cheering as the victims grew motionless, their bodies turning black, like charcoal. According to the footage, which was seen by Myanmar Now but has been deemed too disturbing and graphic to share, those responsible for burning Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung were dressed in Myanmar military uniforms. Locals said that there were around 10 junta troops stationed in Myauk Khin Yan in November—reportedly led by a major, Than Naing—as well as some 200 Pyu Saw Htee militiamen. The soldiers, whose battalion had not been identified at the time of reporting, are said to be from the Regional Operations Command based in neighbouring Sagaing Region’s Kalay Township. “Soldiers lead the torture. The Pyu Saw Htee carried it out,” a YDF spokesperson said of the November killings of his group’s members. A member of another local resistance group allied with the YDF speculated that the Pyu Saw Htee and military had killed Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung so brutally—and documented their deaths—to warn others against opposing the coup regime. “They did this to try to instil fear in the people,” he said. Pyu Saw Htee domination Myauk Khin Yan, a sizable community with established municipal and transportation infrastructure, is one of more than 10 villages in northern Gangaw and southern Kalay townships with a heavy Pyu Saw Htee presence. Prior to the coup, the village was split between supporters of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—a military proxy—and the National League for Democracy, which won Myanmar’s late 2020 election by a landslide, the results of which were later rejected by the army, which staged a coup in early 2021. Months after the attempted seizure of power, junta troops arrived in Myauk Khin Yan and other neighbouring communities, determining that the village would serve as a base for the burgeoning military-backed Pyu Saw Htee militia to fight the growing resistance movement in the Yaw region. “Since soldiers came from the Monywa-based Northwestern Regional Military Command in three military trucks and settled in the villages, they began to dominate the villagers, eventually transforming villages into Pyu Saw Htee strongholds,” an officer in the Gangaw Township People’s Defence Team said. The military initially held combat training for 60 people in Myauk Khin Yan, with later sessions more sparsely attended. When people did not join voluntarily, selection came at random, the resistance officer said. Myauk Khin Yan’s Pyu Saw Htee militia, alongside Myanmar army troops, regularly raided and set fire to villages along the Gangaw-Kalay road, leading to fierce clashes with local resistance groups. When anti-junta forces made territorial gains in the Yaw region in late 2022, the Pyu Saw Htee chapter in Myauk Khin Yan paused their arson attacks, but remained fortified against invasion by guerrilla groups. Myauk Khin Yan’s Pyu Saw Htee militia unit was reportedly organised by Hla Swe, former USDP lawmaker and current chair of the military party in Naypyitaw—perhaps better known by his alias, Bullet Hla Swe—who made claims to have led the chapter. Last November, at the same time as the YDF members’ murder, he posted on Facebook that, amid resistance attacks on junta targets in nearby villages, his militia had requested reinforcement troops but none had been provided. Still, he boasted, Myauk Khin Yan’s Pyu Saw Htee force remained “the strongest in the area.” Residents of such designated Pyu Saw Htee villages are typically unable to venture out, with guerrilla forces maintaining control over strategic roads. The isolation, they said, caused the prices of basic commodities to skyrocket. Villagers from other areas often opted not to sell items like rice, beans, or salt to those who remained in Myauk Khin Yan. “Myauk Khin Yan was shunned by the other villages because they intensely hate the village, so no one came to it,” said a woman from the community, who, like thousands of other residents, have fled the Pyu Saw Htee occupation over the past three years, at great risk. The militia and military have been seen by locals planting landmines around the village as a deterrent to those who try to escape; in late January, a woman in her 30s was killed by one such device as she and a dozen other residents attempted to run away from the village. For this reason, the woman who spoke to Myanmar Now said, there are still residents of Myauk Khin Yan who do not support the regime’s hold on their community, but who feel they have no way to leave.

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