‘This will not happen again’- army commander says of Lashio murders
Maj-Gen Kyaw Kyaw Soe, the vice-commander
of Northeast Command based in Lashio Township, has told families of last week’s
murder victims from Mong Yaw that “This kind of incident will not happen
again.”
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| A funeral service was held on Saturday for five victims in a monastery in Mong Yaw. |
According to the wife of Sai Zei, one of
the seven persons killed, the Burmese army major-general visited her and her
children on Sunday.
“The vice-commander visited Mong Yaw on
Sunday and donated 300,000 kyat [US$250] to each victim’s family,” she said.
“He stated that this payment was not compensation, but was being handed over to
express sympathy.”
She said that she and other victims’
families are pleading for public assistance.
“We are just simple villagers and don’t
know how to proceed with this case. We are asking for help,” she said.
Five of the slain villagers had reportedly
been arrested by a unit of Burmese government forces on June 25. Eyewitnesses to the incident claim the government soldiers
displayed insignia indicating they were from Northeast Command’s Division 33.
The soldiers reportedly opened fire on villagers while they were working in a
cornfield. Five men were then rounded up and interrogated, accused of being
rebels or rebel supporters, sources said. The five men were then herded into a
truck and driven away. They were not seen again until their
bodies were uncovered from shallow graves
near a Burmese army encampment on June 29.
Two other locals were reportedly killed
when soldiers shot at them for running through a makeshift army checkpoint on
their motorcycle.
On Monday, the parents of two of the dead
appealed to local authorities to investigate the case, according to Sai Wan
Leng Kham, an Upper House MP from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy.
News of the killings has prompted some
response from international Burma watchers.
Mark Farmaner, the director of Burma
Campaign UK, said, “The killing of these civilians by the Burmese army is a war
crime and should not be ignored by the international community or the NLD-led
government.”
With regard to the new government’s
approach to atrocities committed during the civil conflict, Farmaner said,
“Aung San Suu Kyi’s current approach seems to be to talk about peace, but not
mention the war. When people raise human rights violations she says people need
to focus on the future, not the past. But for ethnic people, human rights
violations are not just a thing of the past, they are continuing.
“Aung San Suu Kyi might not have political
control over the Burmese army, but she has moral authority and the power to
mobilize public opinion, which could influence the Burmese army to stop
killings like this.”
David Mathieson, the senior researcher at
the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Shan Herald that HRW
was looking into the case and trying to verify it.
“It's gruesomely consistent with the
patterns of violations being reported out of Shan State, where a multi-sided
and decidedly murky conflict has escalated in recent years, displacing
thousands of civilians,” he said, adding that his group had received “credible
reports of a range of abuses including extrajudicial killings, torture, forced
labor and forced recruitment, and indiscriminate air strikes” from the Shan
region.
BY: Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
Tags: Human Rights, News
