Soldiers and members of a junta-sponsored militia arrested and tortured a couple travelling on the road in Sagaing Region’s Kanbalu Township last week, allegedly raping and killing the wife before the husband managed to flee.
Aye Mar Oo and her husband Kyaw Myo departed from the village of Nyaung Kone, Kawlin Township around 6am on October 16, to attend a ka htein—or monks’ robe offering—in Taze Township to the southwest, travelling via Kanbalu Township.
They were arrested at around 9am by junta troops and military-trained Pyu Saw Htee militia members at a checkpoint on the Shwebo-Myitkyina road near the village of Sa Bai Nant Thar some 12 miles southeast of Kanbalu.
The soldiers and Pyu Saw Htee members let five other motorcycles through the checkpoint while holding the couple for inspection, examining their identification cards and mobile phones, according to Kyaw Myo, 35, who later escaped.
At the checkpoint, the troops confiscated the couple’s motorcycle, two necklaces, a locket, a bracelet, a pair of earrings, a tical of gold (a Burmese unit of measurement just over half an ounce), 700,000 kyat (US $172) in cash, and three mobile phones, according to Kyaw Myo.
“They went through my phone, but there was nothing of significance—I hardly use the internet,” Kyaw Myo told Myanmar Now.
“Still, they found a pretext, talking about my ID card. They said, ‘You are from Nyaung Kone village and she is from Hpa Lan Chaing, so neither of you will escape.’ They sent my wife to one dormitory and me to another. As soon as I arrived, they tied my hands behind my back and began torturing me.”
Having separated Kyaw Myo and Aye Mar Oo, 32, the soldiers and militia members tortured the husband for most of the day, keeping his hands tied behind his back, he said. They held his wife Aye Mar Oo in a separate dormitory a short distance away, no more than the length of three or four bamboo poles, Kyaw Myo recalled.
According to Kyaw Myo, the group that beat him included four or five people in Pyu Saw Htee militia helmets.
“They kept punching me relentlessly, drinking intermittently and then hitting me again. They slashed me with knives and jabbed the points into my temples, neck, and chin,” Kyaw Myo recounted. They also beat me with wooden sticks—logs about three to four fingers thick.”
During the ordeal, Kyaw Myo’s tormentors threatened to kill both him and his Aye Mar Oo, he said, and threatened to rape her.
“After they left, I could hear sounds coming from the dormitory where she was held, as the buildings were quite close to each other,” he said.
Later that afternoon, Kyaw Myo heard a gunshot from the building where they were holding Aye Mar Oo. After another hour, two armed men came to take him away, and he gathered from their whispered conversation that they were taking him somewhere to kill him, Kyaw Myo recalled.
Noticing the men were drunk, Kyaw Myo said he took the first chance he had to jump off into a small channel running nearby and escape.
“I just thought, ‘let them shoot’, and I jumped into the stream and ran,” he said. “From the place where they intended to kill me, I leapt into the water and then made my way back onto the land to get away. When they shot at me, I felt that it didn’t matter whether I died because I hadn’t been able to save my wife anyway.”
Barely able to see with his eyes swollen from a full day of beatings, Kyaw Myo said he spent the whole night with his hands still tied behind his back. On October 17, the morning after the authorities had stopped him and his wife at the checkpoint, resistance members found him and administered medical treatment.
“His hands were tied behind his back, and his clothes were drenched after a rainy night,” an intelligence officer from Kanbalu District Battalion 3 said. “He managed to escape with great difficulty and could hardly stand, as his body was battered and covered with wounds and bruises.”
Kyaw Moe’s face was bruised and swollen, with knife cuts over his right temple, the resistance intelligence officer said. There was also severe bruising on his back, as well as puncture wounds on his neck and between his ribs.
Kyaw Myo recalled how he had resolved to attend the ka htein donation ceremony in Taze, his wife’s native township, and make offerings in both their parents’ names.
“I had hoped to celebrate the ka htein festival joyfully, but now that my wife is gone, I don’t know how I can face her younger siblings. They might believe me, given how much I endured to escape,” he said.
“I don’t know how to explain this to anyone. We had planned to make these ka htein donations for the eighth anniversary of my mother’s death and in honor of both our parents. I am devastated that she can no longer be included.”
Some 70 junta and connected personnel operate at the Sa Bai Nant Thar checkpoint on the strategic Shwebo-Myitkyina road where Kyaw Myo and Aye Mar Oo were stopped, including around 40 militia members and 15 junta soldiers who conduct inspections and hold commuters and bus passengers for questioning.
Arrests have occurred more frequently at the checkpoint since the junta reopened the road last month, local resistance members have reported.
According to the Kanbalu District PDF intelligence officer, the Pyu Saw Htee militia members in
Sa Bai Nant Thar village operate under the guidance of the ultranationalist Buddhist monk U Warthawa, and are headed by the militia commander Thet Phyo Han.
He added that nine young people travelling from Shwebo to Tanai by bus as well as three from Taze had been detained over the last few days at the same checkpoint.
The junta has been fighting to wrest full control of this stretch of the Shwebo-Myitkyina road in Sagaing Region from resistance forces, who still hold some segments of the route in Kanbalu Township.
The resistance forces have issued warnings to civilians in the area to remain vigilant as junta troops have advanced into villages near the route in their attempts to reclaim it, and have reportedly been detaining and abusing civilian travellers.
Seven men returning to Kanbalu Township from Mandalay Region’s Singu Township in early September were also arrested at a checkpoint on the same road in Kanbalu Township, between the villages of Bu Kone and Yae Kyi U. They were reportedly tortured, bound with ropes, and deliberately burned alive, with only one managing to escape.
