This Short Update describes events that occurred in Htaw Ta Htoo (Htantabin) Township, Taw Oo (Toungoo) District during the period between September and November 2023, including house burning, indiscriminate shelling and air strikes. In September 2023, tensions were heightened between the State Administration Council (SAC) and local armed resistance groups in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, Htaw Ta Htoo Township, after People’s Defence Force (PDF) and Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) extrajudicially killed an SAC soldier who had been sent to the area as a spy. After this killing, the SAC burned down at least 27 villagers’ houses in five different villages, shelled mortars into villages, and conducted air strikes in the area, causing three casualties. The shelling injured one villager, damaged five villagers’ houses and one shop, as well as plantations, and killed one cow. The air strikes injured two villagers and damaged a villager’s house.[1]

 

 

House burning in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract

From the second week of August 2023, combined forces of the People’s Defence Force (PDF)[2] and Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)[3] increased their military activities in every village in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, Htaw Ta Htoo (Htantabin) Township, Taw Oo (Toungoo) District.

As reported by local villagers, Maung[4] Kyaw Htun, a soldier from State Administration Council (SAC)[5] Infantry Battalion (IB)[6] #39, was ordered by his leader to return to his parents’ village, A--- village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, to investigate the military activities of the KNLA and PDF there while posing as a civilian. Soldiers from the KNLA and PDF knew about this situation. On September 12th 2023, the KNLA and PDF arrested Maung Kyaw Htun whilst he was at his father’s house, took him to a place outside the village, and killed him. Maung Kyaw Htun’s family members went to SAC IB #39 army camp immediately after finding out he was killed and informed the SAC about what had happened. On September 13th 2023, at 6 am, SAC combined forces, including IB #39 which is based in Lay Maing village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, went with five military trucks and two artillery trucks to A--- village, B--- village, and C--- village, in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract.

At around 10 am on September 14th 2023, these SAC combined forces burned down four houses in B--- village. The owners of those houses are Saw[7] D---, Saw E---, Saw F--- and Saw G---. Also on this day, these SAC combined forces burned down seven houses in C--- village. The owners of those houses are Ko[8] H---, Ko I---, Ko J---, Ko K---, a daughter of Ko K---, Daw[9] L---, and Daw M---. After the SAC troops burned down villagers’ houses in these two villages, they stayed in B--- village for three days. On the third day, September 16th, at 6 am, the SAC troops retreated from the village and returned to their army camp. On the afternoon of September 16th 2023, KNLA and PDF soldiers burned down Maung Kyaw Htun’s father’s house. This contributed to increasingly heightened tensions between local armed resistance groups and SAC troops in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract.

On October 20th 2023, SAC combined forces, including IB #39, went to N--- village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, where they burned down three villagers’ houses. The owners of those houses are Saw O---, Saw P--- and Saw Q---. 

On November 12th 2023 at 1:30 pm, the combined forces of the KNLA and PDF attacked these SAC troops using tripwire bombs in a place between A--- village and N--- village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, after which fighting broke out. On the evening of November 12th 2023, the SAC troops burned down nine houses in B--- village, as well as four houses in A--- village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract. Villagers whose houses were burned down in B--- village are Saw R---, Saw S---, Saw T---, Saw U---, Maung V---, Naw[10] W---, Naw X---, Saw Y--- and Saw Z---. Villagers whose houses were burned down in A--- village are Aa---, Ko Ab---, Ko Ac--- and Ko Ad---. 

The SAC combined forces that are based in Lay Maing village, including IB #39, often fired mortar shells into villages and surrounding areas where they thought the KNLA and PDF soldiers might stay, regardless of whether fighting had occurred or not. During the reporting period, the SAC also conducted air strikes in this area.

Indiscriminate shelling into Day Loh Mu Nu village tract

On October 19th 2023, at around 1 pm, the SAC combined forces, including IB #39 that is based in Lay Maing village, indiscriminately fired rounds of mortars into villages in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract, Htaw Ta Htoo Township, Taw Oo District. These villages include A---, B---, C---, N---, Ae---, Af---, Ag---, and Ah--- villages. One of the mortar shells landed in a shop owned by U[11] Ai--- in C--- village. The mortar shell exploded, damaging the shop. 

On November 17th 2023, the SAC troops indiscriminately fired mortar shells into villages in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract. One of the mortar shells landed in a farm near Ae--- village. It exploded and its shrapnel killed a cow owned by Saw Aj---. On November 19th 2023, the SAC troops again indiscriminately fired rounds of mortar into villages in Day Loh Mu Nu area. One of the mortar shells landed in a villager’s house in N--- village. It exploded and damaged the roof of the house owned by Ak---. Shrapnel from the mortar shells also hit other three houses nearby, damaging them. 

On November 27th 2023, the SAC troops indiscriminately fired rounds of mortar into villages in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract. One of the mortar shells landed in a rubber plantation owned by a villager near Af--- village. It exploded and damaged the rubber plantation. There were no casualties [caused by the shelling] in this village.

Also on November 27th 2023, at 9:04 pm, the SAC combined forces based in Lay Maing army camp and Kon Nit Maing (Seven Miles) army camp, indiscriminately fired rounds of mortars into Ag--- village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract. The mortar shells exploded in a rubber plantation owned by a villager, damaging it. Shrapnel from the mortar explosion hit a house owned by a 34-year-old female villager, Naw Al---. She was also hit by the mortar shrapnel, sustaining injuries to her elbow.

Air strikes in Day Loh Mu Nu village tract

On November 27th 2023, at 3:17 pm, the SAC conducted an air strike in Ah--- village, Day Loh Mu Nu village tract. The air strike injured two villagers, one of whom was seriously injured. A villager’s house was also damaged by the air strike.

                    

 

 

 

Further background reading on the situation on house burning, indiscriminate shelling and air strikes in Taw Oo District, Southeast Burma, be found in the following KHRG reports:

 
Tue, 05 Mar 2024

Footnotes: 

[1] The present document is based on information received in November and December 2023. It was provided by a community member in Taw Oo 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 People’s Defence Force (PDF) is an armed resistance established independently as local civilian militias operating across the country. Following the February 1st 2021 military coup and the ongoing brutal violence enacted by the junta, the majority of these groups began working with the National Unity Government (NUG), a body claiming to be the legitimate government of Burma (Myanmar), which then formalised the PDF on May 5th 2021 as a precursor to a federal army.

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

[4] ‘Maung’ is a Burmese male honorific title used before a person’s name.

[5] 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 Burma/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.

[6] An Infantry Battalion (IB) comprises 500 soldiers. However, most Infantry Battalions in the Tatmadaw are under-strength 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 NCA. They are primarily used for garrison duty but are sometimes used in offensive operations.

[7] ‘Saw’ is a S’gaw Karen male honorific title used before a person’s name.

[8] ‘Ko’ is a Burmese title meaning older brother. It can be used for relatives as well as non-relatives.

[9] ‘Daw’ is a Burmese female honorific title used before a person’s name.

[10] ‘Naw’ is a S’gaw Karen female honorific title used before a person’s name.

[11] ‘U’ is a Burmese male honorific title used before a person’s name.

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ဖးအါထီၣ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ထွဲတဖၣ်

တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- သုးကဘီယူၤခးလီၤတၢ်, တၢ်ဃ့ၢ်မှံဟးဖျိး, ဒီးတၢ်ဟးဂူာ်ဟးဂီၤ ဖဲဒီၣ်ဖးခိၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ် လါယူၤလံ ၂၀၂၃နံၣ်
တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- လၢဒီၣ်ဖးခိၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်အပူၤ SAC ကဘီယူၤဒုးသုး ခးလီၤတၢ်အဃိ သဝီဖိသံခံဂၤ, ဘၣ်ဒိသၢဂၤဒီး တၢ်ပီးတၢ်လီဟးဂူာ်ဟးဂီၤ (လါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်)
တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- ပယီၤသုးဒွဲၣ်အူဟံၣ်ဃီ, ခးလီၤနါစိၤကျိဖးဒိၣ် ဒီး ခးလီၤတၢ်လၢကဘီယူၤ ဖဲထီတထူၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ် (လါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ် တုၤ လါနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ်, ၂၀၂၃နံၣ်)
တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- တၢ်ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ်ချံ, ကဘီယူၤခးလီၤတၢ် ဒီး SAC သုးတဖၣ်ဒွဲၣ်အူထီၣ်ဟံၣ်, PDF သုးဖိတဖၣ် မၢဆူၣ်သဝီဖိလၢကဒုးနဲၣ်ကျဲ ဖဲထီတထူၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်ပူၤ (လါနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ် တုၤလၢ လါဒံၤစဲဘၢၣ် ၂ဝ၂၃ နံၣ်)
တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါအဖုၣ်- SAC တၢ်ဖီၣ်န့ၢ်ဆူၣ်တၢ်, တၢ်မၤဆါပယွဲ, တၢ်ဖီၣ်ဆူၣ်မၤတရီတပါ, တၢ်ဒွဲၣ်အူဟံၣ်ဃီ ဒီး တၢ်မၢအီၣ်ဆူၣ်သဝီဖိတဖၣ် ဖဲဒီၣ်ဖါခိၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်ပူၤ (လါနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်)