Incident #2

On September 18th 2016, in a separate incident, a KHRG community member met with a female health worker and interviewed her about a killing case that had happened in August 2016 in G--- village, T’Moh Klo village tract, Paingkyon Township, Hpa-an District.

In August 2016, a husband and wife in G--- village were shot and killed in two separate locations on the same night, at 9 PM in G--- village. The husband was shot and killed at his farm hut, whilst at the same time his wife was taken from her house and was shot and killed in front of the village primary school. Both husband and wife were killed by machine gun. According to the villagers, the couple was suspected of practicing witchcraft. It is believed they were killed by Border Guard Force (BGF)’s soldiers under General Hpah Nwee’s command, also known as Hpuh Hpah Nwee. Less than one year prior to the incident, the couple and their family members had been asked to drink promissory water at BGF’s General Hpah Nwee’s place and the couple had been told by General Hpah Nwee not to practice witchcraft anymore. However, the couple was killed less than a year after they drank promissory water.

According to local sources, the people who killed the couple asked the G--- village head to bury the dead bodies. The perpetrators also told the victims’ remaining family members, victims’ relatives and other villagers not to report the killing case and threated to kill all family members if they report the case and if news of the killing case were to spread.

Following the threats, the affected villagers felt afraid and were unwilling to report the killing case to authorities. The female victim’s mother stated that,

“I have been in fear since people killed my daughter and my son-in-law. [...] We were really afraid because people told us that they would kill all of us [relatives] if [information about] this case spreads and if other people know about it, or if they know for sure that people reported about this incident.”

“I did not really see it [the incident]. Villagers wanted to tell us [what happened] but they were afraid that people [involved in the murders] would kill all of their relatives if this [information on the] case spreads. Therefore they could not tell us openly. […] But an aunty [elderly lady] said that, after the killers committed the killings, they ordered the relatives who remained that they should lose [forget about] this killing case here and if [information on] this case were to come out, it would be because of one of the relatives here. If this happened, they would do [kill] all of the relatives.”

However, G--- villagers reported that a witchcraft case had never happened before in the village. According to the female victim’s mother, she had heard a rumour about her daughter practicing witchcraft so she had asked her daughter directly if that rumour was true.  Her daughter had responded to her that,

“Mom, how can I do that [witchcraft]? I have never planned to do anything bad to anybody. Even when my children were sick I could not even make a piece of spirit thread and a rice ball [according to traditional practice to heal them] for them. I have to call other people to do it for me, so I clearly am not able to do anything bad [with witchcraft] to other people.”

A friend of the female victim also reported that, “My friend was an honest woman. She worked patiently as a daily labourer and then she used the money that she earned to offer donations to the monastery, and support her children to go to school. She got money only from her daily labour work. That’s all I understand.”

The husband and wife who were killed had three children; the eldest child migrated to work in Thailand, the middle child stays in a monastery in town and the youngest child who is five years old stayed with them to attend school. As of September 2016, the two older children were not informed that their parents had been killed, whilst the youngest child was in the care of her 75 year old grandmother who cannot work for her living, and other family members stay nearby to provide additional help.

Furthermore, as the woman was shot and killed directly outside the village school, at the time of reporting, teachers and students did not feel safe to teach and study at school anymore. Instead, they were teaching from a villager’s house.

There has been no action from authorities for this case as the family report that they are fearful to report it to authorities.

Incident #3

On October 3rd 2016, in a separate incident, a KHRG community member met and interviewed a 43 year old woman named Naw L--- in M--- village, Paingkyon Township, Hpa-an District. Naw L--- reported to a KHRG community member about the killing incident of her mother and her brother during a robbery that happened in September 2016, both of whom were accused by local people of practising witchcraft.

Naw L--- reported that in September 2016 at 3 AM in the morning, a group of people came to her house and shouted that they would kill the whole family in the house, and started shooting. Naw L---’s mother was shot dead in the bedroom; Naw L---’s brother was shot three times and killed as he fled outside, and Naw L--- was hacked with an axe on her head in her bedroom but survived the attack. Describing the attack, Naw L--- recalled,

“The killers took my axe and my knife. They hacked my head with the axe that I used to cut firewood [...].

How many times did they fire the gun?

I heard [the gun] two times in the house.  I was shocked when I heard it so I did not hear the sound of the gun [fire again] when they shot my mother.  They shot my brother on the ground floor [outside the house] three times.” 

Naw L--- mother’s name was Ma P---, she was 87 years old. Her brother’s name was Maung N---, he was 48 years old. The group of people who raided the house and killed them reportedly included KNU-KNLA PC[3] soldiers.

Two villagers named Neh Pyu, a cousin of Naw L--- who lives in Taw Plaw village, and Nya Lee, who lives in Pah Meh village and is a soldier of KNU-KNLA PC, had publicly stated that Naw L---’s mother was practicing witchcraft. Prior to the incident Nya Lee had previously traded precious stones but he had lost profit so he migrated for work in Thailand. Naw L--- stated that she suspects that Nya Lee is the one who is responsible for organising the murder of her mother and brother. According to Naw L---, there was no issue about her mother being suspected of witchcraft before Nya Lee returned in the village. When Nya Lee returned to the village, he had spread the rumour that Naw L---’s mother had witchcraft skills, then he sold his land and with the profit, bought a gun and, reportedly, killed Naw L---’s mother. Naw L--- stated,

“People said my mother and my brother were practicing witchcraft. They said my mother had a stone which was possessed by a spirit, and that my brother went to the ground floor of other people’s houses [to practice witchcraft]. People who said my mother had a stone which was possessed by a spirit called us to my cousin T---’s house and questioned me. I replied to them we did not have it [the possessed stone], and if we had to drink promissory water we would drink it in the village, but they did not do it [make us drink it]. Three traditional healers said it was my mother alone who did it [brought evil spirits] to all of the villagers’ children who got such illness and high temperatures that their children were delirious.”

According to Naw L---, prior to the incident, she went to Thaton Town in April 2016 to check with a Burmese-speaking spirit healer (shaman) about the witchcraft allegations, by asking the healer whether her mother had witchcraft skills or not. The spirit healer checked and told Naw L--- that her grandparents had been able to do witchcraft, and that they had passed this skill to Naw L---’s mother before they had died. Following this, Naw L--- returned to her village and her mother, her brother and herself went to another spirit healer in S--- village to rid themselves of the witchcraft that they were suspected of. The spirit healer did not see any evil spirits in Naw L--- and her mother but the fortune teller explained that Naw L---’s brother had taken a ball of thread from dead people [their bodies] and, because of this, the evil spirit was close to him. Therefore, the spirit healer asked them to stay for three days for the treatment before returning back to their village. Before Naw L--- returned to her village, she requested the spirit healer to go to her house and check around their compound for any evil spirits, and to check if anyone had buried anything evil (items that had been cursed/possessed) under their house.

Sometime after Naw L--- returned to her village, the spirit healer phoned Naw L--- and asked her to invite her village leaders to her house, and told her that he would come there and solve the issue of the evil spirits. According to Naw L---, when the spirit healer came to her house to take away the evil spirits, some villagers were not satisfied with the action, and they continued to accuse Naw L---’s mother of having witchcraft skills and of having a stone possessed by evil spirits, although Naw L--- asked the spirit healer to check the gem stones that they owned, and he stated that they were good stones, not cursed. Following this however, the spirit healer asked Naw L---, Naw L---’s mother and Naw L---’s brother to drink promissory water in front of village leaders, villagers and the Paingkyon Township KNU’s official to prove that Naw L---’s family were not practicing witchcraft. According to local belief, upon drinking the promissory water, if any of the family members were practicing witchcraft they would experience bad effects or die brutally. 

Later on, Naw L---, her mother and her brother were asked by the local village leaders to drink promissory water again at the local monastery. Naw L--- said,

“They called three of us to the monastery to drink promissory [water]. If we did any bad things, the promissory water would kill us, three days after we drank it. Before we drank it, we had to curse [promise] to ourselves, saying three times ‘If I plan to do anything bad to other people, may I die after drinking this water’.”

Nothing happened to Naw L---’s family after they had drunk the promissory water until the night of the attack on their family home. According to Naw L---, the group which shot and killed her mother and brother also took 3,500,000 kyat [US$2567.81[4]] from her house, and stole additional precious gold items which were four rings, four necklaces, one pendant, one piece of hair clip, a piece of golden comb, a piece of golden bangle, and a dozen golden buttons. Naw L--- did not know the value of the gold that the group stole because she had never weighed the gold.

In the morning after the robbery and killing of Naw L---’s mother and brother, the Myanmar police came to the village and went to the incident place, Naw L---’s house, and examined the crime scene. The police asked Naw L--- many questions about the incident. Due to the injury that Naw L--- sustained on her head from the axe attack, Naw L--- was then sent to Paingkyon hospital and then to Hlaingbwe hospital. However, neither of the two hospitals accepted her for treatment as they were not equipped with an X-ray machine and deemed her injury as too serious. Finally, Myanmar police sent her to Hpa-an Hospital where she received treatment. However, despite her serious head injury, Naw L--- stayed at Hpa-an Hospital for only one day before requesting permission to return to her home village in order to attend her mother’s funeral service, and to receive treatment at a local hospital in her village area.         

Eventually, according to Naw L---, the perpetrators who robbed her family and murdered her mother and brother were arrested by the Myanmar police and detained in jail in Taung Ka Lay jail, Hlaingbwe Township, Hpa-an District. The people who were arrested and detained by the Myanmar police are four males: Nya Lee, Poe T’Thay, Poe T’Thay’s son and one other man who Naw L--- could not identify. These four people are members of Karen Peace Council (also known as the KNLA/KNU-PC) from Battalion #773. According to Naw L---, Myanmar police came to her house with the suspects to discuss the crime scene with them and gather evidence for the conviction. When they came, Naw L--- cooked food for the suspects. One of the suspects told her that he had chosen not to kill her because he had already taken all her money and jewellery. The suspect told her, 

“I hit your head with an axe. Then I saw and took all of your money and jewellery, so I did not kill you. People had ordered me to kill all of you [in the house] and although I knew that you had not died yet, I did not do it [kill you]. When I went back to them [the people who ordered the killing], they asked me ‘Are they all dead?’ I replied ‘Yes, they are all dead’. Actually I lied to them.”

Naw L--- did not remember the exact incident date but she told a KHRG community member that the incident had happened less than a month before her meeting with KHRG community member on October 3rd 2016. According to the local source, as of March 2017, Paingkyon Township KNU’s leaders held the meeting with village tract leaders and Naw L--- in order to address a complaint raised locally that village tract leaders had been involved in the decision to kill the two family members. During the meeting, village tract leaders denied the accusation that they had been involved, and reported that they had not been aware of the plan to commit this crime. Additionally, Naw L--- reported that the Myanmar police had found all the property stolen from her and had promised to return it but Naw L--- had not received any back yet.