Junta forces detained and then murdered four people from Mandalay Region’s Natogyi Township last week, even after the troops accepted a payment from their families to negotiate their release, locals said.
Three of the victims were identified as Than Myint Swe, 50, from Ward 8; Aye Myat Mon, also known as Ma Be Eu, 40, from Ward 7; and Saw Shwe from Su Phyu Kan village, whose age was not known. The fourth individual was a 25-year-old man about whom further information was not available at the time of reporting.
Military personnel in four army trucks and two civilian vehicles arrested the four people from area households while checking for unregistered overnight guests on the evening of November 3.
The next morning, their bodies were discovered to have been dumped at two sites outside of Natogyi town.
Saw Shwe was found dead near Letpan village, next to Su Phyu Kan, where he was from. The other three individuals were found near Zay Date village. Both locations are less than one mile from a Naypyitaw-Mandalay highway police outpost, as well as the Pyinsi police station, both under junta control.
“Some of them had been shot and some had knife wounds. Ma Be Eu’s body also had cuts on her breasts,” a local man said.
Than Myint Swe, Ma Be Eu (Aye Myat Mon) and Saw Shwe were described by locals as “avid supporters” of the National League for Democracy (NLD). The party’s elected government, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi, was ousted in the February 2021 coup, after which 1,169 NLD members—including 90 parliamentarians—were arrested, according to a party statement released on Wednesday. Sixty-seven of them, two of whom were MPs, were killed in junta custody.
The Natogyi local who spoke to Myanmar Now after the recent murders said that the victims’ family members had offered the junta troops 10m kyat (nearly US$4,750) not to arrest them; the soldiers reportedly took the cash and proceeded to detain the four civilians.
“They took it but they killed the victims anyway,” he said.
An officer in the anti-junta Natogyi Defence Force said that area informants had been known to provide the military authorities with lists of NLD supporters, who they then frequently accuse of being involved in the anti-coup armed resistance movement.
“The victims had no ties with revolutionary groups whatsoever. They were just regular NLD supporters,” the officer told Myanmar Now.
The military is also accused of arresting five Natogyi locals in early October who were later found to have been fatally stabbed.