"I Can't Forget That Girl" - Confessions of Myanmar's Departed Soldiers' Atrocities | Latest_news
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Myanmar military personnel have admitted killing, torturing and raping civilians in an exclusive interview with the magazinetodayy.blogspot.com. This is the first time they have detailed the massive human rights abuses they committed - and they say they were ordered to do them.
Warning: This report contains descriptions of sexual violence and torture.
"They ordered me to torture, loot, and rape innocent people."
Maung Woo says he thought he was recruited into the army as a guard.
But he was part of a battalion that killed civilians hiding in a Buddhist ashram in May 2022.
"We were ordered to capture all the men and then shoot them dead." "The saddest part is that we had to kill an elderly man and a woman too," he says.
The testimonies of 6 soldiers, including a corporal, and their victims give an idea of how an army became desperate to stay in power. All Myanmar's names have been changed in this report to protect their identities.
These soldiers have recently left the army. They are sheltered by the People's Defense Force, or PDF, a loose network of civilian militia groups fighting to restore democracy in Myanmar.
In Myanmar, the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup last year. Now they are trying to suppress the armed uprising of civilians.
On December 29 last year, three helicopters began circling the village of Yai Myet in central Myanmar. The soldiers in it were ordered to fire.
Five different people described what happened there. They spoke separately to the magazinetodayy.blogspot.com.
They say the army, divided into three groups, entered the village and started firing indiscriminately on women, men and children.
"The order was to shoot anyone on sight," said Corporal Aung. He was speaking from a secret location in a remote forest in Myanmar.
"Some people thought the place was safe and hid there. But when the soldiers came there, they started running and we kept shooting at them," he said.
Corporal Aung admitted that his unit shot dead five men and buried them
"We were also ordered to set fire to all the big and good houses in the village," he says.
Soldiers were setting fire to houses as they passed through the village, shouting "Burn! Burn!"
Corporal Aung set fire to four houses. Others interviewed said around 60 houses were burnt down, leaving most of the village in ashes.
Most of the villagers escaped, but not all. There were people in a house in the middle of the village.
Thiha says he joined the military just five months before the operation.
Like many others, he was recruited from within the community and - he says - was not trained.
Locally these soldiers are called Anghar-sit-thar or "hired soldiers".
He was well paid at the time - 200,000 Myanmar khat (about US$100) per month. He clearly remembers what happened in that house.
While setting fire to a house, he found a teenage girl trapped behind an iron chain.
"I can't forget his screams, it still rings in my ears, it is embedded in my mind" - he said.
He told his captain about the girl. The captain replied, "I told you to kill everyone you see." So Thiha threw fireballs into the room.
Corporal Aung was also there. He too could hear the screams of the girl who had been burned alive.
"It was shocking to hear. We could hear his voice repeatedly for about 15 minutes while the house was burning," he said.
U Myint, a relative of the girl, said the girl had mental problems. So his parents left him at home while they went to work.
"He tried to escape, but they caught him and burned him," he said.
This girl is not the only victim of these soldiers.
Thiha says he joined the army for the money - but was appalled by what he was forced to do and the brutality he saw.
He tells of a group of young women from Yei Miet - whom they arrested.
Thiha said that the army officer handed over the girls to his subordinates. Said, "Do whatever you want."
They then raped the girls, but Thiha said she was not involved.
We find two of those girls. The two young women, Pa Pa and Khin Toe, said they fell in front of soldiers on the road as they tried to escape.
They are not residents of Yei Miet village, they came to a tailor there.
They repeatedly told the soldiers - they are not PDF fighters, not even residents of that village. But they were held captive in a local school for three nights.
They were repeatedly sexually assaulted by intoxicated soldiers every night, they said.
"They blindfolded me with a sarong, and threw me on the ground. Then they took off my clothes and raped me," said Pa Pa - "I was screaming while they were raping me."
He repeatedly asked the soldiers to stop, but they continued to hit him around the head, brandishing guns and threatening him.
"We have to accept it, because we were afraid that we might be killed" - said Pa Pa's sister Khin Toe, trembling.
These girls said they were so scared that they couldn't even look at their torturers. But they might think that there were two kinds of people in them - those in military uniforms and those in white.
"When they caught the young girls," said Thiha, "while raping them, they said 'this is because you support the PDF'."
At least 10 people were killed in the violence in Yei Mie, and eight girls were reportedly raped over three days.
The brutal killings in which the mercenary Maung U took part - took place on May 2, 2022, in the village of Ohake Pho. This village is also located in Sagaing region.
He narrates that his members of the 33 Light Infantry Division, which he belonged to, captured and killed the people of a Buddhist ashram. Disturbing video footage and eyewitness accounts obtained by the BBC soon after the attack matched Maung U's description.
The video shows nine bodies lying in a row - including a woman and a man with long hair lying side by side.
They are all wearing sarongs and t-shirts.
The video suggests that they were shot at close range and from behind.
We also spoke to villagers who witnessed the killing.
They identified the woman next to the elderly man. Her name was Ma Mo Mo, and she was accompanied by her children and a bag full of gold. He was begging the soldiers not to take his belongings.
"Soldiers looted his belongings and shot him dead even though he had children with him. They lined up the men and shot them one by one" - said one named La La - who was at the scene but was not killed.
The infant child of the deceased woman is alive and is now with her relatives.
La La says he could hear soldiers bragging on the phone that they had killed eight or nine people. Killing people was 'delicious', they said, and that day was their most successful day yet.
He says, when they left the village, 'Victory! Victory!" chanted.
Another woman said that she saw the scene of her husband's murder. "They shot him in the thigh first, and told him to lie down. Then they shot him in the hip and finally in the head."
She insists her husband was not a member of the PDF.
"He actually used to grow palm and earn a living in traditional ways. I have a son and a daughter. I don't know how to live now."
Maung Woo says he regrets his actions. "That's why I'm telling you everything" - he said - "I want everyone to know so that this does not happen to anyone else."They suggest that this is a planned strategy to undermine public support for a war of prevention.
This comes at a time when many say the military is struggling to keep up with the civil war on multiple fronts.
Bin Village, Sagaing Region, Myanmar
Drag the button to the left to view the burned areas
Myanmar Witness is a research group that monitors incidents of human rights violations. They have verified more than 200 reports of burning villages in the same manner in the last 10 months.
They say that the level of such arson is increasing rapidly. At least 40 attacks occurred in January and February. This was followed by at least 66 such incidents in March and April.
Village burned by Myanmar military
his is not the first instance of the Myanmar military adopting a 'scorched earth policy'.
In 2017, similar policies against the Rohingya population in Rakhine State were widely reported.
Myanmar's mountainous areas inhabited by various ethnic groups have faced such attacks for decades.
Many fighters from these ethnic groups are now helping the PDF with weapons and training in its civil war against the military.
Human Rights Watch says the soldiers' descriptions show how they are allowed to loot and kill freely - a culture that has existed in Myanmar for decades.
Accountability for these atrocities against the military is rare.
However, due to defections and deaths at the hands of the PDF, Myanmar's military is increasingly forced to hire more soldiers and militias.
About 10,000 people have defected from the army and police since the 2021 coup - says a group called People's Embrace - made up of former soldiers and police.
"The military is struggling to continue fighting a civil war on multiple fronts," said Michael Martin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Both officer and enlisted ranks are having trouble getting people, they're having trouble recruiting, a lot of people are dying, they're having trouble getting equipment and supplies. They're losing ground or control in different parts of the country."
The incidents described in the report took place in two areas - Magoye and Sagaing. And both of these are historically recruiting grounds for Myanmar's army.
But the youth here are now joining the PDF instead of the army.
Corporal Aung made it clear why he defected.
"If I had known that the military would win in the end - I would not have defected and joined the people," he said.
According to him, soldiers now do not dare to go outside their base alone. Because they fear that PDF will kill them.
"Wherever we go - we take big groups. No one can say we are imposing authority," he said.
We raised the allegations of our investigation with Myanmar military spokesman General Jaw Min Tun.
In a statement, he denied targeting civilians by the army. He said the targets of both raids were legitimate - and those killed were "terrorists."
Denying allegations that the army was burning villages, he said PDFE was setting fires.
How and when this civil war will end is hard to say. But it seems the fear will come back to haunt millions of people in Myanmar.
And, the longer peace is delayed, the more women like rape victim Khin Toe will be at risk of violence.
He says he doesn't want to live anymore after what has happened in his life, and he has even thought about committing suicide.
She could not even tell her lover what had happened in her life.
