This Short Update describes events that occurred in Kaw T’Ree (Kawkareik) Township, Dooplaya District, in November 2023. On November 2nd 2023, combined troops of Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and Kaw Thoo Lei Army (KTLA) attacked State Administration Council (SAC) Infantry Battalion (IB) #32 army camp near A--- village, Maw Hkee village tract, Kaw T’Ree Township, by drone, and fighting broke out. Following this, SAC troops heavily shelled into A--- village and surrounding villagers’ plantations during the whole day. In fear, villagers from A--- village fled to B--- area, an internally displaced people (IDP) site. Moreover, the SAC shelling into A--- village created fear for villagers in neighbouring villages to live and work in their village.[1]

 

 

SAC shelling after fighting in Kaw T’Ree Township

On November 2nd 2023, in the morning, at 7:20 am, Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)[2] Battalion #201, combined with Kaw Thoo Lei Army (KTLA)[3] troops, dropped three shells by drone into State Administration Council (SAC)[4] Infantry Battalion (IB)[5] #32 army camp near A--- village, Maw Hkee village tract[6], Kaw T’Ree Township, Dooplaya District. SAC IB#32 Battalion Commender's name is Kyaw Zin Oo. Following the shelling, fighting broke out, and stopped at 10:40 am. Though the fighting stopped, the SAC soldiers shelled [rounds of] 120mm, 81mm, and 60mm mortar shells and [fired rounds from an] RPG7 [rocket-propelled grenade launcher] into A--- village and nearby plantations for the whole remaining day. As a result, some shells landed on corn fields and pea plantations, creating fear for villagers to go and harvest rice and peas from the plantations, though it was time to harvest crops. [Due to the shelling, several buildings such as a church, a school and a house were damaged, but no villagers were injured.]

As reported by a local villager to KHRG, villagers from A--- village did not dare to live in their village, so they sought shelter in B--- area [an IDP site located at the Thai-Burma border]. Villagers from [nearby villages such as] C--- village and D--- village, in Maw Hkee village tract, were also living in fear. As a result of this incident, villagers feel that they must be wary when moving around their villages, working in plantations, or going to school, for example. They also feel trapped because of this fear of moving around.

 

 

 

 

Further background reading on the situation of indiscriminate shelling and displacement in Southeast Burma can be found in the following KHRG reports:

 
Mon, 26 Feb 2024

Footnotes: 

[1] The present document is based on information received in November 2023. It was provided by a community member in Dooplaya District who has been trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions on the ground. The names of the victims, their photos and the exact locations are censored for security reasons. The parts in square brackets are explanations added by KHRG.

[2] The Karen National Liberation Army is the armed (KNLA) wing of the Karen National Union (KNU).

[3] The Kaw Thoo Lei Army (KTLA) was founded on July 17th 2022 by Brigadier-General Nerdah Bo Mya. Nerdah Bo Mya, former Commander-In-Chief of the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), was dismissed by the KNU in 2022. KTLA operates in two districts in Southeast Burma, in KNU-controlled areas, namely Mergui-Tavoy and Dooplaya districts. In Dooplaya District, they operate in alliance with resistance armed groups. KTLA battalions in Mergui-Tavoy District are in conflict with both SAC and KNLA troops.

[4] The State Administration Council (SAC) is the executive governing body created in the aftermath of the February 1st 2021 military coup. It was established by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on February 2nd 2021, and is composed of eight military officers and eight civilians. The chairperson serves as the de facto head of government of Myanmar and leads the Military Cabinet of Myanmar, the executive branch of the government. Min Aung Hlaing assumed the role of SAC chairperson following the coup.

[5] An Infantry Battalion (IB) comprises 500 soldiers. However, most Infantry Battalions in the Tatmadaw are understrength with less than 200 soldiers. Yet up to date information regarding the size of battalions is hard to come by, particularly following the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). They are primarily used for garrison duty but are sometimes used in offensive operations.

[6] A village tract is an administrative unit of between five and 20 villages in a local area, often centred on a large village.

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ဖးအါထီၣ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ထွဲတဖၣ်

ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- တၢ်မၤသံ, တၢ်ဒွဲၣ်အူဟံၣ်ဃီ, တၢ်ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ် ဒီး တၢ်ဃ့ၢ်မှံဟးဖျိး ဖဲလါယနူၤအါရံၤ ဒီးလါဖ့ၤဘြူၤအါရံၤ ၂ဝ၂၃ နံၣ်
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- SAC ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ်လၢသဝီတဖၣ်အပူၤအဃိ တၢ်ဃ့ၢ်မှံဟးဖျိးကဲထီၣ်သးဖဲ ကီးတရံးကီၢ်ဆၣ်, လါနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ် ၂ဝ၂၃ နံၣ်
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ်တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ် - SAC ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ်လၢသဝီတဖၣ်အပူၤအဃိကဲ ထီၣ်ဝဲတၢ်ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံးဒီးတၢ်သံတၢ်ပှၢ် (၁၉) ဂၤ ဒီးကဲထီၣ်ဝဲတၢ်ဟးဂူာ်ဟးဂီၤဒီး SAC ခးသံဝဲသဝီဖိလၢအဟ့ၣ်နီၤလီၤတၢ်မၤစၢၤတဂၤဖဲ ကြုၢ်တုကီၢ်ဆၣ် (လါယနူၤအါရံၤ ဒီးလါမးရှး ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်).
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- SAC ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ် ဒီးကဘီယူၤခးလီၤတၢ်အဃိ ကဲထီၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံးဒီးတၢ်သံတၢ်ပှၢ်, တၢ်ဟးဂူာ်ဟးဂီၤ ဒီးတၢ်ဃ့ၢ်မှံဟးဖျိး ဖဲ ကြုၢ်တုကီၢ်ဆၣ်, လါဒံၣ်စဲဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်.
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- SAC ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ်အဃိ ဘၣ်သံသဝီဖိတဂၤ ဒီး ဘၣ်ဟးဂီၤဟံၣ်ဃီတဖၣ်ဖဲ ကြုၢ်တုကီၢ်ဆၣ်, (လါမ့ၤ ဒီး လါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်)