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| Surrendered KIA soldiers. |
On the morning of 16 April more than forty strong KIA (Kachin Independence Army) regular troops led by KIA sergeant Kyaw San has laid down their arms and surrendered at a Burmese army outpost in the Shan village of Talawgyi in Myitkyinar Township.
Since the hostilities restarted between KIA and Burmese army a year ago many of KIA troops has surrendered and this recent group has brought along with them 23 AK-47 Chinese rifles, ammunitions, night-vision-binoculars, radio wireless sets, and shoulder-fired RPG (Rocket-Propelled-Grenade) launchers.
The KIA troops who surrendered to the Burmese army IB-37 (Infantry Battalion 37) during the annual water festival were claiming to be ordinary Shan and Kachin villagers from the Talawgyi Village and they were forcibly recruited into KIA against their will.
They claimed to have killed their Kachin KIA officers before their surrender.
According to one of them, private Sai Maung Aye, he is a Shan national born and living in Chibwe with his parents the sugarcane farmers. He was taken away by KIA as a forced-recruit in December 2009 when his village refused to fill the KIA’s village-quota for new recruits.
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| Surrendered KIA soldiers and their war-weapons. |
He said he was imprisoned for more than a winter-month in a hole in the freezing ground and later forced to participate in building new KIA camps. And since last year he had been sent into the battlefields as a heavy-weapon-carrier.
According to Ma Dein-danang, a college-student from Myitkyinar University, KIA has been forcefully taking away the innocent villagers all over the Kachin state to serve as porters. And all the villagers from any Kachin or Shan village that couldn’t pay KIA the hefty protection money or food and supplies are arrested and taken away, she added.
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| Original News report in Burmese from 18 April 2012 Kyay-Mone Newspaper. |
Many of low level KIA troops are now deserting their posts and surrendering in large scale to the army as they do not agree with their self-proclaimed Christian Kachin leaders of KIA/KIO on waging war against the Union and also the torturous treatments they have been receiving in the hands of their own Kachin KIA officers.
In previous cases of desertion and surrender, KIA has a normal practice of seriously harming the family and killing the close-relatives of the deserters. This time Government’s IB-37 has taken full responsibility for the security of the Talawgyi Village as almost all of the surrendering KIA troops were from that village.
KIA’s Laiza headquarters, when contacted to confirm the mass surrender, has so far refused to answer.
(Warning : Following video has graphic scenes not suitable for a faint-hearted.)
----------------------------------------Update on 30 Apr 2012-------------------------
KIA has deceitfully released a nasty report claiming that all the surrendered KIA men have been killed in the battles against KIA forces as the Burmese army was using them as guides. That propaganda report is a hoax and the following video of interviews with the supposedly-killed men is the proof.