This Incident Report describes events occurring in Noh T’Kaw Township, Dooplaya District. On October 30th 2023, villagers from Waw Loo village tract, Noh T’Kaw Township, were transporting yams with two trucks in order to sell them in Mawlamyine Town. When they reached an army camp checkpoint on Ka Lee Hkee hill, where Border Guard Forces (BGF) Battalion #1023, Cantonment Area #4, and State Administration Council (SAC) Light Infantry Division (LID) #44 are based, SAC soldiers shot at them. A 35-year-old villager, Saw A---, from B--- village, Waw Loo village tract, was injured by the shooting. After this incident, the villagers were afraid to travel on that road, but they had to use it for their livelihood activities.[1]

 

 

Part 1 – Incident Details

Type of Incident

[Shooting of civilians] A villager’s arm was injured because SAC soldiers shot him while he was travelling.

Date of Incident(s)

October 30th 2023

Incident Location

(Village, Township and District)

Ka Lee Hkee (Hkoh Kwar) army camp, Waw Loo village tract,[2] Noh T’Kaw Township, Dooplaya District.

Victim Information

Name

Saw[3] A---

Age

35 years old

Gender

Man

Ethnicity

Karen

Marital Status  

Married

Occupation

Daily labourer

Religion

Christian

Position

- [villager]

Village

B--- village, Waw Loo village tract, Noh T’Kaw Township, Dooplaya District.

Perpetrator Information (Armed Actors)

Name(s)

Rank

Unit

Base

Commander’s Name

Unknown

Unknown

State Administration Council (SAC)[4] Light Infantry Division (LID)[5] #44;

Border Guard Forces (BGF)[6] Battalion #1023, Cantonment #4

Ka Lee Hkee (Hkoh Kwar) camp

Major Eh Htoo;

Captain Wa Shin Tan [both BGF]

 

Part 2 - Information Quality

1. Explain in detail how you collected this information.

[The KHRG researcher] got to know about this incident from a villager from D--- village, Noh T'Kaw village tract, who [was at Ka Lee Hkee army camp at the time of the incident and] transported the victim [, after he was injured]. [Afterwards, the researcher conducted interviews with another villager who witnessed this incident, named Saw C---, and the victim’s cousin.]

2. Explain how the source verified this information.

The researcher interviewed Saw C---, one of the villagers who experienced this incident, and [verified the information by also interviewing] the victim’s cousin.

 

Part 3 – Complete Description of the Incident

Describe the Incident(s) in complete detail.

On October 30th 2023, villagers from B--- village, Waw Loo village tract, Noh T'Kaw Township, Dooplaya District, were transporting elephant foot yams [a vegetable used in local cuisine] with two trucks in order to sell them in Mawlamyine Town. Before they went up to [Ka Lee Hkee (Hkoh Kwar)] hill, [where BGF Battalion #1023, Cantonment #4, and SAC LID #44 army camp is located], they passed a car that was returning on that road and asked whether they could go [pass through Ka Lee Hkee camp] or not. After that, they continued their journey until they reached the [camp’s] checkpoint. One of the villagers, Saw C---, from B--- village, Waw Loo village tract, explained to KHRG: “Actually, we waited for them [SAC and BGF soldiers] to come [to the checkpoint] and collect the gate fee. After a few minutes, no one came and collected the fee. Then, we honked the truck’s horn [as a warning noise], but no one came. I thought maybe the situation was not good [something might happen], so I went to the truck and drove it. When we drove [the first truck] about 20 yards [18 meters] past the gate, they [SAC soldiers] shot at us [with machine guns].”

 

In this incident, a 35-year-old villager, Saw A---, from B--- village, was injured. While [the first truck had already passed the checkpoint gate, and the second truck was still at the gate,] Saw A--- was about to open the truck’s door, when SAC soldiers at the top of the hill camp shot at him. He was shot on his right arm and fell down in front of the gate. [After the victim was shot,] a villager from D--- village, Noh T'Kaw village tract, Noh T’Kaw Township, took the victim away from the gate by motorcycle [to a nearby Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA)[7] checkpoint]. After that, a DKBA leader, General Nay Lah, sent the victim to Seik Gyi Town hospital. Saw C--- explained: “He [Saw A---] put his arm on the truck’s door. During the shooting, the [second] truck driver said he had doubts about whether he should go [continue driving] or not. The driver stopped the truck and asked Saw A--- to get out of the truck to put a chock under the [truck] wheel because the road is a slope. Saw A--- was [shot and] injured when he was about to open the truck’s door. As soon as he was injured, [a villager took him to the DKBA checkpoint a few minutes away from Ka Lee Hkee camp and] we asked for help from a [DKBA] soldier. The civilians [nearby] dared not transport him [to the hospital] because they did not know whether he was three fingers [People’s Defence Force (PDF)[8]], DKBA, or Karen National Union (KNU)[9]. Actually, we are civilians. We asked for help from the DKBA, and a soldier contacted his company commander. At that time, the company commanders, Nae Klar and Nay Lah, were coming [to the DKBA checkpoint]. So they [the commanders] took him to the [Seik Gyi] hospital”.

 

As soon as the victim arrived at the hospital, a health worker came immediately. Due to the fact that the victim was injured by a bullet, he needed an X-ray, but Seik Gyi hospital is unable to provide treatment [due to a lack of capacity]. The victim stayed at Seik Gyi hospital for one night. Saw C--- continued: “We called the ambulance, but the ambulance crew dared not transport the victim. The next day, the company commander [DKBA] scolded the ambulance crew and said ‘you guys dared to transport the soldiers who were injured, but not civilians.’ Later, we rented another car [found someone to drive the victim], and the victim was sent [to Mawlamyine].”

 

The victim was sent to Mawlamyine Town on October 31st 2023, and sought treatment at Mawlamyine Hospital. He has not yet been discharged from the hospital [as of November 2023]. The victim has two children, and his wife is pregnant. The victim was the breadwinner of his family. Therefore, after he got injured, his family faced problems, and they moved to E---village, Poh Yay village tract, Kaw T’Ree Township, and stayed with his wife’s parents. The victim’s family did not receive any support [from any organisations as of November 2023].

 

After this incident, the villagers were afraid to travel on that road. Saw C--- added: “If it was possible, I would not use this road for travelling anymore. However, we only have this comfortable [paved] road to travel, so we need to use it. We dare to travel only when many people are travelling.” The villagers do not want to travel on this road, but they have to use it for their livelihood.

 

Part 4 - Permission for Using the Details

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

 The villagers interviewed about this incident gave permission for the information to be shared.

 

           

 

Further background reading on the situation of attacks on villagers in Southeast Burma/Myanmar can be found in the following KHRG reports:

Thu, 16 May 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] A village tract is an administrative unit of between five and 20 villages in a local area, often centred on a large village.

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

[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] A Light Infantry Division (LID) of the Tatmadaw is commanded by a brigadier general, and consists of ten light infantry battalions specially trained in counter-insurgency, jungle warfare, search and destroy operations against ethnic insurgents . They were first incorporated into the Tatmadaw in 1966. LIDs are organised under three Tactical Operations Commands, commanded by a colonel, three battalions each and one reserve, one field artillery battalion, one armoured squadron and other support units. Each division is directly under the command of the Chief of Staff (Army).

[6] Border Guard Force (BGF) battalions of the Tatmadaw were established in 2010, and they are composed mostly of soldiers from former non-state armed groups, such as older constellations of the DKBA, which have formalised ceasefire agreements with the Burma/Myanmar government and agreed to transform into battalions within the Tatmadaw.

[7] The Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), formerly the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, was formed in December 1994 and was originally a breakaway group from the KNU/KNLA that signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burma/Myanmar government and directly cooperated at times with Burma Army forces. The formation of the DKBA was led by monk U Thuzana with the help and support of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the name of the military government in Burma/Myanmar at that time.

[8] 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 formalized the PDF on May 5th 2021 as a precursor to a federal army.

[9] The Karen National Union (KNU) is the main Karen political organisation. It was established in 1947 and has been in conflict with the government since 1949. The KNU wields power across large areas of Southeast Myanmar and has been calling for the creation of a democratic federal system since 1976. Although it signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement in 2015, relations with the government remain tense.

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ဖးအါထီၣ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ထွဲတဖၣ်

ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်သးတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါ- ပယီၤသုးခးလီၤနါစိၤကျိဖးဒိၣ်အဃိ ဘၣ်ဒိၣ်ဝဲသဝီဖိတဂၤ ဖဲ နိၣ်တကီကီၢ်ဆၣ်, လါနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃နံၣ်
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်သးတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါ- SAC ခးဘၣ်ဒိသဝီဖိတဂၤ ဖဲနိၣ်တကီကီၢ်ဆၣ်, ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် ဖဲလါအီးကထိဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်သးတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါ- SAC ပယီၤသုးကဘီယူၤဟဲခးလီၤတၢ် အဃိ ဘၣ်ဒိဝဲဖိသၣ်ပိာ်ခွါ ၁၁ နံၣ်တဂၤ ဒီးပှၤမိၢ်ဒၢတဂၤ ဖဲကီးတရံးကီၢ်ဆၣ်, (လါနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ် ဒီး လါဒံၣ်စဲဘၢၣ် ၂၀၂၃နံၣ်)
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ်တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်သးတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါ- SAC ခးလီၤကျိဖးဒိၣ်လၢသဝီပူၤဒီး ဘၣ်ဒိဝဲ သဝီဖိခံဂၤအကျါ ပၣ်ဃုာ်ဖိသၣ် ၁၅ နံၣ်တဂၤ ဖဲကြုၢ်တုကီၢ်ဆၣ်ပူၤ, လါမ့ၤ ၂၀၂၃ နံၣ်