Type of Incident

Arbitrary arrest and killing

Date of Incident(s)

July 18th 2023

Incident Location

(Village, Township and District)

Thein Za Yet Town, Kyeh Htoh Township, Doo Hta Htoo District

Victim Information

Name

Saw[2] A---

Age

25 years old

Gender

Man

Ethnicity

Karen

Marital Status   

Married

Occupation

Seller

Religion

Buddhist

Position

Unknown [Villager]

Village

B--- village, Hsaw Thuh Hkee village tract[3], Kyeh Htoh Township

Perpetrator Information (Armed Actors)

Name(s)           

Rank

Unit

Base

Commander’s Name

Unknown

Unknown

Light Infantry Battalion (LIB)[4] #207, under Light Infantry Division (LID)[5] #44

 Thein Za Yet Town, Kyeh Htoh Township

 Unknown

1. Explain in detail how you collected this information.

A KHRG field researcher received this incident’s information from the village head [village administrative] of B--- village. The KHRG researcher went to Saw A---’s house and conducted an interview with his wife and mother.

2. Explain how the source verified this information.

Saw A---’s mother provided the information. She was involved in identifying Saw A---’s dead body and arranging his burial service.

Describe the Incident(s) in complete detail.

On July 18th 2023, around 7 am, Saw A--- drove to Thein Za Yet Town, Kyeh Htoh Township, Doo Tha Htoo District, to purchase goods because the stock [from his shop] had been sold. At 11 am he had finished gathering all the goods on his motorbike. At that time, he accidentally jolted the motorbike of an State Administration Council (SAC)[6] soldier, who was not wearing his uniform, knocking the motorbike over. To resolve the case, Saw A--- sent the SAC soldier’s motorbike to a mechanic shop [with the soldier’s approval]. After the motorbike was fixed, the SAC soldier [called somebody] on the phone, before going away. The soldier returned ten minutes later with a few other SAC soldiers, and had changed to a full SAC uniform. [As witnessed by the seller working at the shop,] the SAC soldier told Saw A--- to follow them for a few minutes, and took him to Artillery Unit #310’s camp. Saw A--- left his goods at a nearby shop and followed the SAC soldiers. That day, Saw A--- did not return home, and his wife tried to search for him but could not get any information on his whereabouts.

On the morning of July 19th 2023, Saw A---’s mother travelled to Thein Za Yet Town [to find out what happened to him]. There, she found out from the shop seller that her son had been taken to Artillery Unit #310’s camp. So, she went to Artillery Unit #310’s camp, but she could not get any information on his whereabouts, because they [the SAC soldiers from Artillery Unit #310] told her that they did not know [anything about him]. [Then, she went to the police station.]

[At the police station,] the mother overheard that a hospital in Thein Za Yet Town had an unidentified dead body, so she went to the hospital. There, she found Saw A---’s corpse. His body was covered in black and blue marks and bruises. His shirt had been torn. When the mother was preparing to take her son’s corpse home, a police officer from Thein Za Yet informed her that the cremation of the corpse could be [arranged] by the hospital, or that the body could be brought back to her hometown.

Later, Saw A--- was [wrongly] accused of supporting the People’s Defence Force (PDF)[7] by [the local police officers from] Thein Za Yet police station, [although] he was just a regular villager. Saw A--- was a shop owner. He had two children; the youngest child was three months old [in July 2023]. Even though he did not know it at the time of his death, his wife was pregnant with their third child, and has since given birth [as of January 2024]. The [SAC] police gave 200,000 kyat [95 USD][8] in cash to the mother as compensation for Saw A---’s [death]. The mother did not want to take the money, but she worried about further retaliation, so she accepted the two hundred thousand kyat from the SAC police. She agreed to the cremation of her son’s body at the hospital on the same day. Local police officers from Thein Za Yet purposefully misidentified Saw A--- as a Zee Pyaung villager, [and accused him of being] a PDF supporter. [Because of this,] Saw A--- was recorded as a Zee Pyaung (Section 1) villager by the hospital.    

When the mother spoke to the seller [working at the shop] where Saw A--- regularly bought goods from, the shop seller told her that Saw A--- had around 600,000 to 700,000 kyat [285 to 330 USD] and a phone with him [before he was taken by the SAC soldiers]. 

When the mother followed up with the hospital about her son’s death, the hospital gave her the written hospital records about her son. The record read that on July 18th 2023, at night time, Saw A--- had a motorbike accident and was sent to the hospital by an unknown group of people. [A nurse from the hospital] told the mother that Saw A--- was already dead when [he was brought] to the hospital.

Three days after Saw A--- was buried, [SAC soldiers from] Artillery Unit #310 informed the mother that she could go [to the camp] and take Saw A---’s motorbike if she wanted to. The mother did not go to pick up her son’s motorbike, as the motorbike was not comparable to the loss of her son [she did not care about the motorbike].  

Did the victim(s) provide permission to use this information? Explain how that permission was provided.

Saw A---’s mother and his wife gave KHRG permission to use the information as needed.