Members of the military arrested a former administrative officer of the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), his wife, their teenage daughter and another relative in a raid that resulted in the destruction of their family home in Banmaw (Bhamo), Kachin State, last week.
Soldiers came to the Nyaungbin ward house of Dashi La Doi, on the evening of October 17, hours after taking his 13-year-old daughter into custody hours earlier from her boarding school. The 55-year-old, his wife and niece were detained from the residence, and are reportedly being held at the base of Operations Command No. 21 under the Banmaw-based Northern Regional Military Command.
“Their underaged daughter was taken first and is being held separately from her parents, so everyone’s worried about what they might do to her,” a source close to the family said.
Troops were seen occupying the area outside the house following the arrest and looting valuable items. The following day, minutes after they had left the site, an explosion went off, causing much of the two-storey building to crumble, the source with ties to the Dashi family said.
“The house was damaged pretty badly as they put a bomb inside it,” the individual told Myanmar Now. “Even the window panes in nearby houses were destroyed by the blast.”
Myanmar Now was unable to obtain further details about the explosion.
According to a statement that Kachin Independence Army (KIA) spokesperson Col Naw Bu gave to Radio Free Asia, Dashi La Doi had once served in the KIO’s administration but had left the organisation several years earlier.
Local sources said that it had been more than five years since Dashi La Doi had worked under the KIO and that he had been recently making a living as a successful gold miner.
While the military council has not released an official statement on the matter, pro-junta news outlet People Media claimed that the family was arrested after the October 18 explosion. The report suggested that Dashi La Doi had been illegally mining gold and jade and harvesting timber in order to fund the KIA—the armed wing of the KIO—in which he was allegedly an officer.
People Media did not mention the arrest and detention of Dashi La Doi’s minor daughter.
The military has intensified its operations against the KIO and Kachin civilians, carrying out a major overnight attack on Mung Lai Hkyet village and internally displaced persons camp near the Kachin-China border on October 9, killing nearly 30 people and injuring 57 others.
A junta airstrike on October 23 last year at a concert commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the KIO in the A Nang Pa area of Hpakant Township caused around 60 casualties initially, and 100 according to later estimates.
