Live Conflict Myanmar Civil War

Dead junta soldiers pictured before their cremation in Kawlin Township, Sagaing Region on Wednesday.

At least 40 junta soldiers were killed on Wednesday when civilian resistance fighters raided regime forces in Kawlin Township, Sagaing Region, according to local residents and the Defense Ministry of the parallel National Unity Government (NUG).

At 2am early Wednesday morning, the Kawlin People’s Defense Force (KLPDF) attacked two groups of 100 junta soldiers stationed near Kyunbyintha Village in Kawlin Township.

The NUG’s Defense Ministry said that the KLPDF used heavy explosives to attack the military regime forces, killing around 40 junta troops. A civilian resistance fighter suffered minor injuries.

Kawlin Revolution released a photo showing members of the KLPDF preparing to cremate the dead soldiers.

A local resident told The Irrawaddy that six military vehicles carrying reinforcements arrived in Kawlin at around 2am early Thursday morning.

Later on Thursday morning, Myanmar military jets launched airstrikes on a rural area of Kyunhla Township in Sagaing, where junta reinforcements have been sent, according to local media.

On Wednesday, three military convoys were ambushed with mines by People’s Defense Forces (PDF) in Sagaing’s Myaung and Myinmu townships. Seven military vehicles were damaged in the attack, but junta casualties are unknown.

In early July, 44 junta soldiers were killed and another 20 injured in attacks by the KLPDF in Kawlin Township. Three civilian fighters died during those raids.

Since early October, the regime has sent 3,000 reinforcements and extra weapons to Sagaing and Magwe regions and Chin State, the country’s most restive areas, to conduct clearance operations against the PDFs.

Military regime forces continue to commit atrocities including raiding villages, bombarding and burning down houses and arbitrarily killing civilians.

As of Wednesday, 1,218 people have been slain since the February 1 coup by junta forces during their raids, crackdowns, arrests, interrogations and random shootings, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Another 9,281 people including elected government leaders have been detained by the junta.

40 Myanmar Junta Troops Killed in Upcountry Clashes

Civilian resistance fighters attacked regime forces in early morning raids in Sagaing Region.

www.irrawaddy.com

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The soldiers in rural Myanmar twisted the young man’s skin with pliers and kicked him in the chest until he couldn’t breathe. Then they taunted him about his family until his heart ached, too: “Your mom,” they jeered, “cannot save you anymore.”

The young man and his friend, randomly arrested as they rode their bikes home, were subjected to hours of agony inside a town hall transformed by the military into a torture center. As the interrogators’ blows rained down, their relentless questions tumbled through his mind.

“There was no break – it was constant,” he says. “I was thinking only of my mom.”

Since its takeover of the government in February, the Myanmar military has been torturing detainees across the country in a methodical and systemic way, The Associated Press has found in interviews with 28 people imprisoned and released in recent months. Based also on photographic evidence, sketches and letters, along with testimony from three recently defected military officials, AP’s investigation provides the most comprehensive look since the takeover into a highly secretive detention system that has held more than 9,000 people. The military, known as the Tatmadaw, and police have killed more than 1,200 people since February.

While most of the torture has occurred inside military compounds, the Tatmadaw also has transformed public facilities such as community halls and a royal palace into interrogation centers, prisoners said. The AP identified a dozen interrogation centers in use across Myanmar, in addition to prisons and police lockups, based on interviews and satellite imagery.

The prisoners came from every corner of the country and from various ethnic groups, and ranged from a 16-year-old girl to monks. Some were detained for protesting against the military, others for no discernible reason. Multiple military units and police were involved in the interrogations, their methods of torture similar across Myanmar.

The AP is withholding the prisoners’ names, or using partial names, to protect them from retaliation by the military.

Inside the town hall that night, soldiers forced the young man to kneel on sharp rocks, shoved a gun in his mouth and rolled a baton over his shinbones. They slapped him in the face with his own Nike flip flops.

“Tell me! Tell me!” they shouted. “What should I tell you?” he replied helplessly.

He refused to scream. But his friend screamed on his behalf, after realizing it calmed the interrogators.

“I’m going to die,” he told himself, stars exploding before his eyes. “I love you, mom.’”

The Myanmar military has a long history of torture, particularly before the country began transitioning toward democracy in 2010. While torture in recent years was most often recorded in ethnic regions, its use has now returned across the country, the AP’s investigation found. The vast majority of torture techniques described by prisoners were similar to those of the past, including deprivation of sleep, food and water; electric shocks; being forced to hop like frogs, and relentless beatings with cement-filled bamboo sticks, batons, fists and the prisoners’ own shoes.

But this time, the torture carried out inside interrogation centers and prisons is the worst it’s ever been in scale and severity, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors deaths and arrests. Since February, the group says, security forces have killed 1,218 people, including at least 131 detainees tortured to death.

The torture often begins on the street or in the detainees’ homes, and some die even before reaching an interrogation center, says Ko Bo Kyi, AAPP’s joint secretary and a former political prisoner.

“The military tortures detainees, first for revenge, then for information,” he says. “I think in many ways the military has become even more brutal.”

The military has taken steps to hide evidence of its torture. An aide to the highest-ranking army official in western Myanmar’s Chin state told the AP that soldiers covered up the deaths of two tortured prisoners, forcing a military doctor to falsify their autopsy reports.

A former army captain who defected from the Tatmadaw in April confirmed to the AP that the military’s use of torture against detainees has been rampant since its takeover.

“In our country, after being arrested unfairly, there is torture, violence and sexual assaults happening constantly,” says Lin Htet Aung, the former captain. “Even a war captive needs to be treated and taken care of by law. All of that is gone with the coup. … The world must know.”

Lin Htet Aung told the AP that interrogation tactics are part of the military’s training, which involves both theory and role playing. He and another former army captain who recently defected say that the general guidelines from superiors are, simply: We don’t care how you get the information, so long as you get it.

After receiving detailed requests for comment, military officials responded with a one-line email that said: “We have no plans to answer these nonsense questions.”

Last week, in an apparent bid to improve its image, the military announced that more than 1,300 detainees would be freed from prisons and the charges against 4,320 others pending trial would be suspended. But it’s unclear how many have actually been released and how many of those have already been re-arrested.

All but six of the prisoners interviewed by the AP were subjected to abuse, including women and children. Most of those who weren’t abused said their fellow detainees were.

Myanmar's systemic abuse

A map of verified locations where prisoners have been detained and, in some cases, tortured. The sites were identified through interviews with former detainees and satellite photo analysis.

In two cases, the torture was used to extract false confessions. Several prisoners were forced to sign statements pledging obedience to the military before they were released. One woman was made to sign a blank piece of paper.

All prisoners were interviewed separately by the AP. Those who had been held at the same centers gave similar accounts of treatment and conditions, from interrogation methods to the layout of their cells to the exact foods provided — if any.

The AP also sent photographs of several torture victims’ injuries to a forensic pathologist with Physicians for Human Rights. The pathologist concluded wounds on three victims were consistent with beatings by sticks or rods.

“You look at some of those injuries where they’re just black and blue from one end to the other,” says forensic pathologist Dr. Lindsey Thomas. “This was not just a swat. This has the appearance of something that was very systematic and forceful.”

Beyond the 28 prisoners, the AP interviewed the sister of a prisoner allegedly tortured to death, family and friends of current prisoners, and lawyers representing detainees. The AP also obtained sketches that prisoners drew of the interiors of prisons and interrogation centers, and letters to family and friends describing grim conditions and abuse.

This photo obtained by The Associated Press shows injuries a man in his 20s says he received while being tortured by Myanmar's military during an interrogation session in March 2021. (AP Photo)

Photographs taken inside several detention and interrogation facilities confirmed prisoners’ accounts of overcrowding and filth. Most inmates slept on concrete floors, packed together so tightly they could not even bend their knees.

Some became sick from drinking dirty water only available from a shared toilet. Others had to defecate into plastic bags or a communal bucket. Cockroaches swarmed their bodies at night.

There was little to no medical help. One prisoner described his failed attempt to get treatment for his battered 18-year-old cellmate, whose genitals were repeatedly smashed between a brick and an interrogator’s boot.

Not even the young have been spared. One woman was imprisoned alongside a 2-year-old baby. Another woman held in solitary confinement at the notorious Insein prison in Yangon said officials admitted to her that conditions were made as wretched as possible to terrify the public into compliance.

Amid these circumstances, COVID ripped through some facilities, with deadly results.

One woman detained at Insein said the virus killed her cellmate.

“I was infected. The whole dorm was infected. Everyone lost their sense of smell,” she says.

The interrogation centers were even worse than the prisons, with nights a cacophony of weeping and wails of agony

“It was terrifying, my room. There were blood stains and scratches on the wall,” one man recalls. “I could see smudged, bloody handprints and blood-vomit stains in the corner of the room.”

Throughout the interviews, the Tatmadaw’s sense of impunity was clear.

“They would torture us until they got the answers they wanted,” says one 21-year-old. “They always told us, ‘Here at the military interrogation centers, we do not have any laws. We have guns, and we can just kill you and make you disappear if we want to — and no one would know.’”

The tortured prisoners were already dead when soldiers began attaching glucose drip lines to their corpses to make it look like they were still alive, a military defector told the AP. It was one of multiple examples the AP found of how the military tries to hide its abuse.

Torture is rife throughout the detention system, says Sgt. Hin Lian Piang, who served as a clerk to the North-Western Regional Deputy Commander before defecting in October.

“They arrest, beat and torture too many,” he says. “They did it to everyone who was arrested.”

In May, Hin Lian Piang witnessed soldiers torture two prisoners to death at a mountaintop interrogation center inside an army base in Chin state. The soldiers beat the two men, hit them with their guns, and kicked them, he says.

After the men were put into jail, one of them died. The major in charge asked the military’s medical doctor to examine the man and determine his cause of death. Meanwhile, the other prisoner began trembling and then died, too.

The soldiers attached the drip lines to the prisoners’ corpses, then sent them to a military hospital in Kalay.

“They forced the Kalay military doctor to write in the chest biopsy report that they died from their own health problems,” Hin Lian Piang says. “Then they cremated the dead bodies straight away.”

Hin Lian Piang says the direct order to cover up the cause of the men’s deaths came from Tactical Operations Commander Col. Saw Tun and Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Myo Htut Hlaing, the two highest-ranking army officials stationed in Chin state. The AP sent questions about the case to the Tatmadaw but they were not answered.

Though the Tatmadaw has been open about many of its brutalities since the takeover — killing people in broad daylight, releasing photos on state TV of detainees’ bruised faces — it has used modified torture techniques and false statements to hide evidence of other widespread abuse.

Several prisoners say their interrogators brutalized only the parts of their bodies that could be hidden by clothes, which Hin Lian Piang calls a common strategy. One prisoner had his ears repeatedly slapped, leaving no scars but inflicting intense pain. Another, Min, says his interrogators placed a rubber pad over his chest and back before beating him with a rod, minimizing bruising.

“They would just make sure to hit you so that only your insides are damaged, or would severely beat you on your back, chest and thighs, where the bruises aren’t visible,” says Min.

The use of rubber pads appears to be a classic example of “stealth torture,” which leaves no physical marks, says Andrew Jefferson, a Myanmar prisons researcher at DIGNITY, the Danish Institute Against Torture.

“It seems to indicate that the torturers actually sort of care about being found out,” Jefferson says. “So few ever get convicted that I don’t really understand why they care.”

The military may be attempting to pre-empt public accounts of its abuses, says Matthew Smith, cofounder of the human rights group Fortify Rights.

“This is a technique that dictatorships have used for a very long time,” he says. “What I believe the authorities are attempting to do is at least inject some level of doubt into the allegations that that survivor or that person or human rights groups or journalists or governments may accuse them of.”

One prisoner, Kyaw, said he was tortured for days and freed only after signing a statement that he had never been tortured at all.

Kyaw’s hell began when the military surrounded his house and detained him for the second time since February for his pro-democracy activism. As the soldiers beat him and hauled him away with five of his friends, his mother wet her pants and fainted.

His usually stoic father began to cry. Kyaw knew what he was thinking: “There goes my son. He’s going to die.”

All the way to the interrogation center in Yangon, soldiers ordered them to keep their heads bowed and beat them with their guns. When Kyaw’s 16-year-old friend became dizzy and lifted his chin, a soldier bashed his head with a gun until he bled.

At the interrogation center, the soldiers handcuffed them, chained them together and put bags over their heads. His first night was a blur of beatings. “Rest well tonight,” one soldier told him.

The next morning, none of the detainees could open their swollen mouths enough to eat their rice. It was the only food Kyaw would receive for four days. He drank from the toilet.

His interrogation began around 11 a.m. and lasted until 2 or 3 a.m. The soldiers poked his thighs with a knife. They zapped him with a taser. They rolled iron rods up and down his legs.

They learned he could not swim, and kicked him into a lake, blinded by the bag on his head and paralyzed by handcuffs that bound his hands behind him. He thrashed and flailed, sinking ever deeper. They eventually yanked him out.

Their questions were monotonous. “Who are you and what are you up to?” they demanded. “I really didn’t do anything,” he replied. “I know nothing.”

Another 100 detainees arrived at the center while he was there, some of their faces so disfigured from beatings they no longer looked human. A few could not walk. One detainee told Kyaw that soldiers had raped his daughter and her sister-in-law in front of him.

On the fourth day, Kyaw’s family called on a friend with military connections to intervene, and the torture stopped. But he was still held for three weeks until the tell-tale swelling in his face went down.

Kyaw was finally released after he paid military officials around a thousand dollars. The officials then made him sign a statement saying that the military had never asked for money or tortured anyone. The statement also warned that if he protested again, he could be imprisoned for up to 40 years.

Kyaw does not know if his friends are still alive. But against his mother’s pleas, he has vowed to continue his activism.

“I told my mother that democracy is something we have to fight for,” he says. “It won’t come to our doorsteps just by itself.”

The soldiers forced the 16-year-old girl to her knees, then ordered her to remove the mask meant to protect her from COVID.

“You are not afraid of death – that’s why you are here,” one soldier sneered. “Don’t pretend like you are scared of the virus.”

Of the prisoners interviewed by the AP, a dozen were women and children, most of whom were abused. While the men faced more severe physical torture, the women were more often psychologically tortured, especially with the threat of rape.

Sixteen-year-old Su remembers kneeling with her hands in the air as a soldier warned, “Get ready for your turn.” She remembers walking between two rows of soldiers while they taunted, “Keep your strength for tomorrow.”

Su pleaded in vain for soldiers to help one of her fellow inmates, a girl even younger than she, whose leg was broken during her arrest. The soldiers refused to let the girl call her family.

Another girl, around 13, cried constantly and fainted at least six times the day they were arrested. Rather than call a doctor, officers sprayed the child with water.

Prison officials warned Su never to speak of what happened inside to people on the outside. “They said, ‘We really are nice to you. Tell the people the good things about us,’” Su says. “What good things?”

Su had never stayed apart from her parents before. Now she was barred from even calling them, and had no idea that both her grandfathers had died.

“As soon as I was released, I had to take sleeping pills for nearly three months,” Su says. “I cried every day.

Inside Shwe Pyi Thar interrogation center in Yangon, the women grew to dread the night, when the soldiers got drunk and came to their cell.

“You all know where you are, right?” the soldiers told them. “We can rape and kill you here.”

The women had good reason to be frightened. The military has long used rape as a weapon of war, particularly in the ethnic regions. During its violent crackdown on the country’s Rohingya Muslim population in 2017, the military methodically raped scores of women and girls.

“Even if they did not rape us physically, I felt like all of us were verbally raped almost every day because we had to listen to their threats every night,” says Cho, an activist detained along with her husband.

Another young woman recalls her four months in a southwest Myanmar prison, and the constant fear of torture and rape.

“I was locked in the cell and they could call me out at any time,” she says.

A teacher, held for eight days at an interrogation center, learned to fear the sound of the cell door.

“Our thoughts ran wild, like: ‘Are they coming to take me? Or are they coming to take her?’” the teacher says. “When we saw them blindfolding someone, we were extremely anxious because that could be me.”

Not every woman was spared from violence. Cho’s cellmate was beaten so severely with a bamboo stick that she could not sit or sleep on her back for five days. And though Cho was not subjected to physical assaults at Shwe Pyi Thar, officers at Insein prison struck her on the back of her neck and forced her into a stress position.

When she objected, they beat her back and shoulders, then banished her to solitary confinement for two weeks.

For another woman, Myat, the beatings began the moment the soldiers burst into her home, smashing the butts of their guns into her chest and shoving a rifle into her mouth. As they arrested her and her friends, she heard one of them say: “Shoot them if they try to run.” She cries while recounting her ordeal.

One 17-year-old boy endured days of beatings, the skin on his head splitting open from the force of the blows. As one interrogator punched him, another stitched his head wound with a sewing needle. They gave him no pain medication, telling him the brutal treatment was all that he was worth. His body was drenched in blood.

After three days, he says, they took him to the jungle and dumped him in a hole in the ground, burying him up to his neck. Then they threatened to kill him with a shovel.

“If they ever tried to arrest me again, I wouldn’t let them,” he says. “I would commit suicide.”

Back inside the rural town hall, the young man ached for his mother as his night passed in a haze of pain. The next morning, he and his friend were sent to prison.

His small cell was home to 33 people. Every inch of floor was claimed, so he lay next to the lone squat toilet.

An inmate gently cleaned the blood from the young man’s eyes. When he looked at his friend’s battered face, he began to cry.

After two days, his family paid to get him out of prison. He and his friend were forced to sign statements saying they had participated in a demonstration and would now obey the military’s rules.

At home, his mother took one look at him and wept. For a month afterward, his legs and hands shook constantly. Even today, his right shoulder — stomped on by a soldier — won’t move properly.

He is constantly on edge. Two months after his release, he realized he was being followed by soldiers. When the sun goes down, he stays inside.

“After they caught us, I know their hearts and their minds were not like the people’s, not like us,” he says. “They are monsters.”

Myanmar military uses systematic torture across country

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The soldiers in rural Myanmar twisted the young man’s skin with pliers and kicked him in the chest until he couldn’t breathe.

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Isa Khan · Oct 28, 2021

Military forces tasked with securing the passage of army convoys through Demoso Township in Kayah (Karenni) State were ambushed by Karenni forces on Tuesday, killing at least 10 troops, according to a spokesperson for one of the resistance groups.

The Karenni Army (KA) and the Karenni National Defence Force (KNDF) intercepted and attacked the units near Htu Lwee Bi Lar and Ngwe Taung villages at around 4pm, with the subsequent clash lasting around two hours.

According to a KNDF spokesperson, the Karenni forces did not suffer any casualties.

“[The soldiers] were providing security for the military convoy heading to Demoso from Hpruso. They ended up retreating after last night’s clash,” he said of the junta security units.

As they fled, the junta troops occupied areas near Chaydawyar pagoda in Demoso, and proceeded to fire artillery shells at civilian homes from their posts, locals said.

One day earlier, the KA and the KNDF had also fired RPGs at the military units in Demoso, reportedly killing two soldiers and injuring five, according to the KA.

A spokesperson from the anti-junta People’s Defence Force (PDF) in Pekhon, southern Shan State—25 miles from Demoso—said that another clash took place between his group and the junta’s armed forces there on Tuesday afternoon.

Also at 4pm, the Pekhon PDF and the KNDF reportedly attacked the military unit stationed in Pekhon Township on a hill near Kathea village in Konehson village tract, with the battle lasting 30 minutes.

It is not known if there were casualties on the military’s side, but the Pekhon PDF spokesperson said one of his group’s own members was shot in the leg and injured in the clash.

The military council has deployed several units to the hill in question, located along the Pekhon-Shwe Pyi Aye road. The troops fired highly explosive 120mm mortar shells at civilian areas of Pekhon during the fighting, injuring three locals.

Nearly the entire population of Kathea and the surrounding area fled, according to the Pekhon PDF spokesperson.

“Military units are stationed all over Pekhon Township and are shooting all over the township, prompting the majority of the locals to flee,” he explained.

Seven members of the Pekhon PDF ambushed an outpost of the Light Infantry Battalion 336 in Pekhon on October 22, killing five junta personnel guarding the post, including three female officers. Five weapons were confiscated from the scene.

The KA, KNDF and PDFs in the region have been collaborating in launching attacks on the military units in Kayah State and southern Shan State where there are large ethnic Karenni populations.

Several junta troops were reportedly killed during an attack by the resistance forces on a 40-vehicle military convoy in Kayah State in late September.

The military council has been sending reinforcements to both Chin State and the Karenni region, and at times forcing civilians to serve as their porters. Some of these porters have been killed by the army, according to the information department of the Karenni National Progressive Party.

There have also been multiple reports of junta units in the region looting civilian homes and placing landmines in residential areas.

Karenni resistance forces report multiple junta casualties as battles escalate

Karenni armed groups ambush Myanmar army units in Demoso and Pekhon townships, claiming at least 10 soldiers were killed

www.myanmar-now.org

Nearly two months after declaring a “resistance war” against Myanmar’s coup regime, the underground National Unity Government (NUG) has formed a central committee to coordinate military operations across the country, its defence ministry said on Thursday.

The newly formed Central Command and Coordination Committee aims to carry out coordinated attacks against the military junta under one chain of command, according to NUG defence secretary Naing Htoo Aung.

“The committee includes individuals from the NUG tasked with defence and military affairs, as well as leaders from some ethnic armed groups,” he said, speaking to Myanmar Now on Thursday.

When asked for more details about the composition of the committee and who would lead it, he declined to reveal which ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) were involved and said that it would operate under “a collective leadership.”

He added, however, that negotiations were still ongoing with a number of EAOs regarding their possible inclusion in the committee.

The committee will coordinate the operations of five commands—north, south, east, west, and central—as well as battalions operating directly under the NUG’s defence ministry, he said.

The NUG is hoping that the creation of a chain of command will help it transform the numerous local, self-organising resistance groups formed in the wake of ruthless crackdowns on non-violent anti-coup street protests into a unified fighting force.

It follows an announcement last month that it was stepping up its efforts to provide weapons and other support to anti-junta armed groups across the country in response to calls from guerrilla fighters for more assistance from the NUG.

“Strategic plans are underway in the committee to collaborate with EAOs to equip resistance forces and provide other assistance required for defence purposes,” Naing Htoo Aung said in an interview with Myanmar Now.

He added that while his ministry continues its consultations with EAOs, it is also arranging to appoint commanders who will go to the frontlines, and to accelerate collaboration with army officers who have defected from the regime.

“The role and capacity of commanders, especially when they need to make decisions on battlegrounds, is crucial. Experience means a lot,” he said.

According to Naing Htoo Aung, the number of people joining NUG-backed People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) has grown steadily in recent months. He wouldn’t say, however, how many troops were believed to be currently available for active duty.

“We now have the capacity to go on many different battlefronts with many brigades and battalions,” he said, without providing any further details.

While the NUG has been seeking donations to fund its military operations, it has declined to reveal where it gets its weapons and other forms of assistance from.

Most of the recruits joining PDFs around the country are youths who have fled to border areas to receive military training in territory under the control of EAOs.

Since the coup, areas that were previously free of armed conflict, such as Sagaing and Magway regions, have seen the emergence of armed resistance groups that have inflicted heavy casualties on regime forces.

Meanwhile, attacks on junta targets have become an almost daily occurrence in major urban centres such as Yangon and Mandalay, where guerrilla groups have been formed to oppose the regime that seized power in February.

According to figures released by the NUG, the military suffered at least 2,478 casualties in more than 1,800 armed conflicts around the country between June and September.

NUG establishes ‘chain of command’ in fight against regime

The move comes amid promises by the shadow government to provide more weapons to anti-junta resistance forces

www.myanmar-now.org

Myanmar’s parallel National Unity Government (NUG) has asked Thailand to cooperate over cross-border humanitarian aid and COVID-19 jabs for refugees.

The NUG’s COVID-19 Task Force (CTF) is a joint effort between the civilian health ministry and ethnic armed organizations’ health agencies to fight COVID-19 in Myanmar. It was formed in July during a deadly wave of COVID-19 in Myanmar.

Padoh Mahn Mahn, a spokesman for the CTF and the Karen National Union’s Brigade 5, said: “We have asked the Thai authorities for cross-border [vaccinations]. But we have to overcome many challenges.”

The Thai government has already been providing COVID-19 jabs to migrant workers and refugees from Myanmar in Thailand. Migrants were receiving COVID-19 jabs this week in Mae Sot, which borders Myanmar’s Karen State.

Thailand also supplied 4,000 free COVID-19 doses to the Mae La camp at the border, the largest Karen refugee settlement in Thailand. Refugees have been vaccinated since September.

Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said US State Department Counselor Derek Chollet recently met Thai foreign minister Don Pramudwina and Myanmar’s crisis was discussed.

They explored ways to enhance cooperation between Thailand and the US in providing humanitarian assistance – including on public health and development of water supply and sanitation – along Myanmar’s border, said the ministry.

Don chaired a meeting on humanitarian assistance for Myanmar on Oct. 20 where a variety of participants expressed readiness to coordinate humanitarian assistance for Myanmar.

Dr. Cynthia Maung, the founder of the Mae Tao Clinic, said cooperation among regional agencies is urgent and vital to providing humanitarian aid while grave human rights violations continue and the majority of Myanmar’s population faces difficulties.

The Mae Sot clinic has been providing basic health care for refugees and migrant workers for three decades.

“A number of countries are interested while aid being provided by international agencies through Myanmar’s military is unlikely to reach people in trouble,” said Dr. Maing.

Myanmar’s Civilian Government Asks Thailand for Cross-Border Humanitarian Aid

Thailand and the US have reportedly been in talks to provide health care to refugees from Myanmar.

www.irrawaddy.com

India’s Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited said it would withdraw its investment in the military-owned Ahlone Port by June next year.

On Wednesday, India’s largest port operator said it was abandoning plans to build a container terminal in Myanmar’s commercial capital, Yangon.

“The company’s Risk Management Committee, after a review of the situation, has decided to work on a plan on exiting [the] company’s investment in Myanmar, including exploring any divestment opportunities,” said the company in its operational and financial highlights statement, adding that the move would be concluded by June 2022.

Adani was granted permission by the Myanmar Investment Commission in April 2019 to develop, operate and maintain Ahlone International Port Terminal 2 on 54 acres (21.85 hectares) of land, with a 630-meter (2,067-foot) jetty owned by the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC).

In March 2021, the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) and Justice for Myanmar (JFM) published Port of Complicity, a report on Adani Ports’ business in Myanmar that included new evidence of payments to MEC and the company’s direct relationship with junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, increasing pressure on investors.

MEC is one of the two military-controlled conglomerates sanctioned by the US following the Feb. 1 military coup. Adani’s initial response was to deny the stark evidence of its business relationship with MEC.

In May, the company said it would abandon its container terminal project and write down the investment if it is found to be in violation of sanctions imposed by the US.

According to Adani, it paid a US$90-million upfront payment to MEC to lease land.

Foreign investments with links to Myanmar’s military have come under pressure from international agencies and human rights organizations since the coup.

Norwegian pension fund KLP divested from Adani in June, saying the Indian company’s links with the Myanmar military breach the fund’s responsible investment policy.

On Thursday, ACIJ and JFM “cautiously” welcomed Adani’s plans to divest from their Myanmar container port business.

“Adani Ports’ plan to divest shows community and investor pressure works. Business with the terrorist Myanmar military does not pay. Adani Ports should never have gone into business with MEC, knowing they would be complicit in the Myanmar military’s atrocities,” said JFM spokesperson Daw Yandana Maung.

Adani has become the latest international investor to leave Myanmar following the coup. Switzerland’s Kempinski Hotel in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw ceased its operations on Oct. 13.

More than 10 foreign companies have either abandoned or suspended their planned investments in Myanmar since the military takeover.

Indian Company Drops Plan to Develop Myanmar Military-Owned Port

Adani Ports’ decision to exit its investment in Myanmar follows criticism of its payments to an internationally sanctioned military conglomerate.

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Isa Khan · Oct 29, 2021

25 more junta soldiers were reported killed on Thursday in Sagaing Region, following clashes between civilian resistance groups and regime forces, raising the total number of junta troops killed in Sagaing in the last three days to 85.

Kawlin Revolution (KR), which shares news of the Kawlin People’s Defense Force (KLPDF), had previously reported the killing 40 regime soldiers on Wednesday morning in clashes near Kyunbyintha Village, Kawlin Township in Sagaing. However, KR has since said that a further 20 soldiers were killed in those clashes.

Another 25 military regime troops were killed on Thursday in a follow-up firefight in the east of Kawlin, according to KR. Three civilian resistance fighters were killed in the clash.

A photo showing members of the KLPDF and local residents preparing to cremate several of the dead soldiers was released by KR on Thursday.

The group said that the body of army major Ye Htut Oo, which had been partially buried by retreating junta troops, was also found.

Six military vehicles carrying junta reinforcements arrived in Kawlin early Thursday morning.

On Friday, a local resident told The Irrawaddy that many areas of Kawlin are now under the control of People’s Defense Forces (PDF). PDF checkpoints on roads are inspecting vehicles to stop the transport of illegally-harvested timber and goods destined for the Myanmar military or produced by army-owned companies.

Kawlin Township has been a hotbed of armed resistance to the military regime. In early July, 44 junta soldiers were killed and another 20 injured in clashes with the KLPDF. Three KLPDF fighters died in those battles.

Civilian fighters in Kawlin are now preparing for revenge raids by the regime. KR claimed on Friday that two columns of junta troops are planning to conduct clearance operations in the east and west of Kawlin, one of the columns having passed through neighboring Kyunhla Township.

On Thursday, regime jets conducted airstrikes against PDFs in Kyunhla, while around 100 soldiers were flown in by helicopter as reinforcements, according to local media.

Sharing photos of the helicopter reinforcement mission, Thalarshwemyay, a pro-military Facebook page, said that the troops were flown in as part of “Operation Alongmintayar” to combat PDFs.

Military helicopters opened fire on a rural area of Taze Township, which borders Kyunhla, on Thursday, according to local news sites and the National Unity Government’s (NUG) Defense Ministry.

Myanmar military forces are now facing intense resistance across Sagaing Region.

On Friday morning, a combined force of eight civilian resistance groups destroyed an abandoned police outpost in Myaung Township, Sagaing. The outpost is often used by junta troops during their deployments in the township, a member of the resistance told The Irrawaddy.

Around 14 junta soldiers were also killed in ambushes in Ye-U and Budalin townships, Sagaing on Thursday, according to the NUG’s Defense Ministry and media.

With the exception of Rakhine State, regime forces nationwide are being confronted with increasing attacks from PDFs and ethnic armed groups including the Kachin Independence Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the armed wings of the Karen National Union and the Karenni National Progressive Party.

Almost 200 junta soldiers were killed and 44 injured in 127 incidents from October 19 to 25, according to the NUG’s Defense Ministry. They included 25 firefights with PDFs, 13 attacks by ethnic armed forces and 89 assassinations and bomb blasts targeting junta troops.

Regime forces have continued to commit atrocities including raiding and burning down villages, bombarding residential areas of towns and arbitrarily killing civilians, especially in Magwe and Sagaing regions and Chin and Kayah States.

Another 25 Myanmar Junta Soldiers Killed in Upcountry Clashes

After 60 regime troops were killed on Wednesday in Kawlin Township, Sagaing Region, civilian resistance groups say that another 25 soldiers also died in Kawlin the next day.

www.irrawaddy.com

The military launched airstrikes in western Kyunhla Township in Sagaing Region on Thursday morning in what locals said was an attempt to destroy People’s Defence Force (PDF) bases they believed to be located there.

Soldiers reportedly arrived by air in four helicopters and two jets starting at around 9am, with heavy weapons fired until the afternoon.

“They opened fire on the area from four helicopters. Some soldiers came out of those helicopters and started firing shells as well,” a Kyunhla resident told Myanmar Now, adding that they were aiming their fire toward the forests in western Kyunhla.

The local PDF did not retaliate, he said.

The air raids follow rumours that the military council would be escalating their attacks on northwestern Myanmar under an offensive known as “Operation Anawrahta.”

Locals from Kyunhla and neighbouring Taze Township speculated that the aircraft involved may have flown from Monywa, also in Sagaing, where the Northwestern Military Command headquarters are located.

Residents of the area fled the strikes, and at the time of reporting, it was not known if there were civilian casualties.

“Everything is in chaos,” the Kyunhla local said. “We had never been under attack. This was the first time.”

A local in Taze told Myanmar Now that the military also fired around 20 rounds of artillery from a helicopter near Sitha and Na Nwintaw villages in the northern part of the township, which borders Kyunhla.

Around 100 junta soldiers have been occupying Kar Paung Kya village in Taze since mid-October. Nearly the entire population of the village has fled as a result, with the troops torching homes in the community as well as huts on its outskirts where displaced locals had sought shelter.

Villagers from Kar Paung Kya said that on October 22 the military council sent ammunition and supplies by air to the soldiers based there.

PDF chapters based in Kyunhla and Taze are armed only with muskets traditionally used for hunting and weapons seized from the junta’s armed forces during clashes. They have employed ambushes and landmine attacks against the Myanmar army, which outguns them.

Armed resistance to the military council intensified after the shadow National Unity Government declared war on the junta on September 7.

The military also launched airstrikes on areas controlled by the Karen National Union in Karen State and Bago Region in March, killing at least 20 people and displacing tens of thousands.

Myanmar army launches airstrikes in Sagaing in attempt to crush PDF

‘Everything is in chaos,’ locals say after the junta opens fire on Kyunhla from four helicopters

www.myanmar-now.org

Myanmar’s military is preparing a major offensive against the Chin National Front (CNF) in Chin state, a representative of the ethnic armed organization (EAO) said Wednesday, prompting a local rights group to warn that such an operation would have a “devastating effect” on the region.

Details of the military plan, which is believed to target CNF headquarters in Chin’s Thantlang township, were revealed amid reports of fresh clashes between junta troops and the Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in northern Shan state that critically injured six civilians—including a toddler and a pregnant woman—and forced hundreds to flee for safety.

Speaking to RFA’s Myanmar Service, CNF spokesman Salai Htet Ni said the junta is sending tanks and reinforcements in several convoys to Thantlang, where an attack helicopter was seen in the sky on Tuesday, confirming information about the operation that the EAO obtained from military defectors.

He said the offensive had likely been planned in response to the CNF’s support for the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), which on Sept. 7 declared a nationwide state of emergency and called for open rebellion against junta rule, prompting an escalation of attacks on military targets by various allied pro-democracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias and EAOs.

“The CNF is, in fact, the first ethnic armed group to reach an agreement with NUG,” Salai Htet Ni said.

“Now that NUG and its political ideology are in line with ours, the military is putting pressure on us more than ever, both militarily and politically.”

Myanmar’s military overthrew the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on Feb. 1, claiming the party had stolen the country’s November 2020 ballot through voter fraud.

The junta has yet to provide evidence of its claims and has violently repressed anti-coup protests, killing at least 1,170 people and arresting 7,240 others, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

Salai Htet Ni noted that Dr. Salai Lian Hmung Sakhong, a leader of the CNF, also serves as the NUG Federal Union Affairs Minister and that the CNF has provided military training to both the local branch of the PDF and the Chin Defense Force (CDF), an armed group formed to combat Myanmar’s military in the western state.

According to the spokesman, the CNF obtained a copy of secret plans for the attack on Thantlang as well as extensive details concerning other operations in Chin state from a sergeant clerk named Tin Lian Biak and a driver from the military’s Hakha Tactical Command—both of whom had defected and joined the country’s anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) on Oct. 9.

Joint forces targeted

Salai Htet Ni said he believes that the military is preparing to launch a full-scale offensive against all three of the armed groups because they had joined forces.

On Sept. 11, the CNF and the CDF seized a military base in Thantlang’s Longle village, near Myanmar’s border with India. According to the CNF, 12 junta soldiers were killed, while only six CNF and CDF fighters were wounded in the raid.

Days later, on Sept. 18, clashes between the junta and CNF/CDF joint forces forced nearly 10,000 people to flee Thantlang. According to residents, several homes in the township were burnt to the ground, while a number of civilians were injured and a local pastor was shot dead during the fighting.

Meanwhile, the military and the CNF clashed Wednesday near Falam township, the spokesman said, although details of the fighting were not immediately available.

Salai Za Op Lin, deputy executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO), said that the information provided by Tin Lian Biak suggests that the residents of Chin state are at grave risk of danger.

“The sergeant who defected to the CDM movement brought a lot of documents with him, including secret information about how they would launch the attacks and what weapons they would use,” he said.

“It looks likely that they are preparing a major military operation focused on Chin state.”

Salai Za Op Lin did not provide any details about the documents Tin Lian Biak delivered to the CNF but said that five members of the man’s family—including his mother—were arrested by the military on Monday in connection with his case.

Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun had yet to comment on reports of troop reinforcements and the intelligence documents obtained by the CNF as of Wednesday.

Civilian casualties in Shan state

Meanwhile, residents of Northern Shan state’s Mong Koe sub-township told RFA that at least six civilians—including a two-year-old girl and a pregnant woman—were critically injured in fresh fighting between junta troops and the MNDAA near Ywa Thit in No. 6 ward on Tuesday.

According to the father of the injured toddler, junta forces attacked MNDAA troops with heavy artillery from a hilltop above Ywa Thit, damaging homes and wounding his daughter, as well as two men and three women in the area.

“The clash started in the lower part of our village. After that the two sides exchanged heavy fire,” said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

“We don’t know where the shell came from as we did not dare to go out. My daughter is still conscious, but I don’t know if her brain was affected. She will be taken to Mandalay Hospital for treatment.”

A relative of one of the wounded, who declined to be named for security reasons, said that altogether three of the injured were transferred from Muse Hospital to Mandalay Hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

“The young girl who was sent to Mandalay has regained consciousness—she understood what we were saying but she could not respond,” the relative said.

The fighting displaced 74 families consisting of at least 410 people from Mong Koe, residents said, adding that most of them are currently sheltering near Myanmar’s border with China.

They said Chinese authorities have been using loudspeakers to warn refugees not to approach the border fence.

A spokesman for the MNDAA told RFA that details of the fighting were not immediately clear.

Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment on the clashes in Chin and Northern Shan states went unanswered Wednesday.

Refugee numbers climb

Fighting between the military and the MNDAA resumed in early August in Mong Koe and Pangsai sub-townships. According to reports from both sides, at least 10 people have been killed or wounded in the clashes so far.

Including the more than 400 people who fled Tuesday’s fighting, there are now nearly 3,000 people displaced by fighting in Mong Koe township alone.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in September that more than 120,000 people have been displaced by fighting since May 21 in Kayah and southeastern Shan states, as well as tens of thousands in Chin, Kachin, and Karen states, as well as Magway and Sagaing regions.

In late August, OCHA announced that the number of people who need humanitarian aid in Myanmar had increased to nearly two million since the military coup. Those displaced by the recent fighting join more than 500,000 refugees from decades of conflict between the military and EAOs who were already counted as IDPs at the end of 2020, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a Norwegian NGO.