The disaster has once again struck a community in the war-torn Sagaing region of northwestern Myanmar.
Junta troops set fire to 17 houses in Mon Taing Pin village in Ye-U township on Monday, a former lawmaker and local resident said.
It was the same army battalion that massacred 29 villagers and burned down more than 70 houses there in May 2022.
Other Myanmar troops and supporting militias torched 30 houses in Kyunhla township on May 29 and 30, forcing more than 3,000 residents to flee, according to villagers.
Sagaing has been an anti-junta stronghold and cradle of resistance to the country’s brutal military rule since the army seized power in a coup in February 2021.
In the latest incident, soldiers from the Army’s Light Infantry Battalion The Ye-U-based 708 burned the houses after local pro-junta informants took them to the houses of civilians whom they accused of being democracy activists, they said.
“The military did it to suppress a people that has unity, honor and great revolutionary strength,” he said. Myint Htwe, an elected parliamentarian representing Ye-U Municipality before the coup and a leader of the local People’s Defense Force operating under the parallel government of Myanmar.
“We can see it because they chose to destroy only this town again and particularly with malice out of all the towns they entered,” he said.
Myint Htwe said that he requested photographic evidence of the latest fire incident and that the shadow Government of National Unity has provided 50,000 kyat (US$24) in humanitarian aid to each affected family.
nowhere to live
Junta forces have swept villages in the Sagaing region, sometimes more than once, to find and punish suspected People’s Defense Forces resistance fighters and their civilian supporters.
TO The Mon Taing Pin resident told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons that families who lost their homes now have nowhere to live.
“Since we have lost our houses, we have to stay in other people’s houses,” said the villager. “My house, my daughter’s and my brother-in-law’s were among the burned houses.”
Junta forces burned down not only the homes of families suspected of being revolutionaries, but also those of teachers who participated in the national post-coup civil disobedience movement.
Myanmar soldiers and members of the pro-regime Pyu Saw Htee militia also raided and burned 30 houses in the Koke Ko Kone and Hlut Taik village areas of Kyun Hla township, prompting thousands to flee to safety, though some returned after forces left the area, a resident said.
“They came in a strategy of clearing areas,” said the villager. “They attacked places along the banks of the river and burned huts and buildings there. They also took civilian property in their vehicles. Some villagers might return to their homes, but others are still in hiding.”
RFA was unable to reach the board’s spokesman for the Sagaing region for comment.
Between February 1, 2021, the date of the coup, and this February 28, the junta forces burned some 60,000 houses, of which between 50% and 75% were in the Sagaing region, according to the Office. for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations. Exteriors, or OCHA.
Translated by Myo Min Aung for FRG Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
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