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They lop off individuals’s heads and mutilate our bodies to instill terror. They torture victims to demise.
They appear fearless in battle, surging ahead when underneath fireplace.
Formally, they make up a part of the 99th Mild Infantry Battalion of the Myanmar army. However to most individuals, they’re referred to as the “Ogre” column, a unit of killers infamous for his or her cruelty in a army already identified for its brutality.
And so they have been criss-crossing Myanmar’s heartland, killing insurgent fighters and massacring villagers believed to be supporting them, terrorizing everybody of their path.
“What makes this column completely different is that they’re specifically educated to kill individuals,” stated Nway Oo, a member of a resistance group in Myaung township. “They chop off the heads and ears of victims in chilly blood.”
“They seem ghostly in battles, too,” he stated. “They transfer ahead in battles irrespective of how dangerous the state of affairs is or how a lot they’re underneath assault.”
Myanmar’s army has confronted stiff resistance from unusual women and men who’ve taken up arms to kind Folks’s Protection Pressure bands to battle junta troops for the reason that army’s coup two years in the past.
The Ogres’ atrocities are supposed to terrorize their foes, who typically have little fight coaching and aren’t often well-armed.
It’s all a part of psychological warfare that was developed by the nation’s generals referred to as “Sit Oo Bi Lu,” the “First wave of brutal assault,” or “Yakkha Byu Har” – “The Ogre Technique,” a former army captain who defected to the insurgent facet for the reason that junta’s takeover.
“Brutal acts by the junta troops, corresponding to beheading individuals and burning down civilian properties, are supposed to frighten the individuals,” stated the captain, who goes by Nat Thar.
“This can be a psychological tactic to scare the individuals into considering that they don’t need to be the one beheaded when the junta’s 99th Division enters their village, to make them worry head-on battle, though they belong to a inhabitants of tens of 1000’s,” he stated.
Battleground Sagaing
Among the fiercest resistance in opposition to the army has been within the northern Sagaing area, and in current weeks the “Ogre” battalion has been attacking dozens of villages and insurgent bases there in townships corresponding to Ye-U, Khin-U, Taze, Myinmu and Myaung.
On March 30, the column raided a PDF base underneath the command of Capt. Bo Sin Yine close to the village of Swae Lwe Oh.
The junta troops quickly overwhelmed the insurgent fighters, and troopers then took Bo Sin Yine, a 31-year-old former corporal within the township’s Fireplace Brigade, and his fighters captive.
Footage taken by a drone operated by the Civilian’s Protection and Safety Group of Myaung, CDSOM, captured a junta soldier beheading Bo Sin Yine, whose identify means “wild elephant,” and carrying his head away on his shoulder.
Just a few days later, Bo Sin Yine’s spouse and a workforce of villagers found his physique deserted close to the jungle. Along with beheading him, junta troopers had lopped off his legs and arms.
“They beheaded him and took away his head, nevertheless it wasn’t simply him. They took away the heads of many individuals in different townships, too,” she stated of her husband, who grew to become the deputy battalion commander of the PDF No.1 in Sagaing.
Previous to coming into Myaung township, the column raided Myinmu’s Let Ka Pin village, the place it killed 10 civilians and disemboweled native PDF chief Kyaw Zaw earlier than chopping off his head and limbs, residents stated. The column additionally killed 16 civilians it had taken as human shields to guard in opposition to landmines after raiding Sagaing township’s Tar Tai village.
Among the many column’s members are troopers the CDSOM has recognized as Capt. Aung Hein Oo, Lt. Capt. Zaw Naing, Sgts. Zaw Set Win, Myint Zaw, Maung Naing, Soe Hlaing, Tun Zaw Myo, and Thein Tun; Lt. Sgts. Ye Yint Paing and Thiha Soe; Engineer Trooper Nay Lin, and Troopers Pyae Sone Aung, Min Thu, and Thant Zin.
‘They informed us to go a message’
In mid-March, the “Ogre” column crossed the Chindwin River from Sagaing into Magway area and made its method south to Yesagyo township, one in every of a number of areas underneath martial legislation as a hotbed of anti-junta resistance.
Early on the morning of March 19, the unit blocked the entire exits from Mee Laung Kyung Ywar Thit village and arrested some 140 residents who didn’t have time to flee.
By the tip of the day, Ogre fighters had shot and killed a person in his 50s named Han, who labored as a cook dinner feeding refugees of battle, tortured a 47-year-old mentally disabled man named Sandra to demise, and wounded a 16-year-old boy as he tried to flee, villagers informed RFA.
These captured in Mee Laung Kyaung Ywar Thit had been added to prisoners from Sagaing’s Myaung township, the place the unit had performed its final raid, together with inhabitants of Za Yat Ni, Min Hla, Thar Khaung Lay, Shwe Hlan, Myay Solar, and Sin Chay Yar villages.
Round 200 girls had been divided into two teams and held on the Taung Kuang Monastery on the outskirts of Mee Laung Kyun village, whereas one other group of 40 males and teenage boys had been positioned underneath guard in civilian houses, sources who escaped the unit stated.
A person who escaped after three days stated that Ogre fighters confiscated his jewellery and interrogated him in regards to the native PDF, claiming they’d already crushed greater than 20 of the group’s bases.
“We didn’t know if they’d take us to the battlefront and pressure us to step on landmines or kill us earlier than they left the village,” stated the person, who declined to be named out of worry of reprisal.
“They informed us to go a message to our kin to surrender preventing, bury their weapons, and finish their assist for the PDF. However regardless of their threats, we are going to proceed to battle in opposition to the regime till the tip.”
Makes an attempt to succeed in Aye Hlaing, the junta’s spokesman for Sagaing area, and junta Deputy Info Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for touch upon the reported actions of the Ogre column went unanswered, as did efforts to contact the junta’s info workforce.
Than Soe Naing, a political analyst, informed RFA that the ways of the Ogre column characterize the “subsequent stage” within the junta’s violence in opposition to the individuals of Myanmar and have to be stopped.
“Such inhumane actions in opposition to people might be thought to be worldwide battle crimes,” he stated, suggesting that the perpetrators needs to be held accountable by a global court docket of legislation.
Searching for justice for victims
Kyaw Win, government director of the U.Okay.-based Myanmar Human Rights Community, stated his group is systematically documenting the junta’s atrocities for simply such a case.
“The junta is committing horrible and disheartening battle crimes, in violation of present … legal guidelines,” he stated.
“Earlier than lengthy, we can prosecute the perpetrators, who’re officers in any respect ranges within the army.”
Within the meantime, the spouse of Bo Sin Yine, who was decapitated by the Ogre column in Myaung township final month, stated that she will be unable to relaxation till her husband and different victims obtain justice.
“I would like justice for him – the crime they dedicated was merciless and savage,” she stated. “Today, the entire nation is aware of in regards to the atrocious brutality of [junta chief] Min Aung Hlaing.”
Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
