(Translation of Staff article from MYANMAR NOW MEDIA on 14 May 2024.)
In the early morning of May-11 more than 100 heavily-armed
Myanmar Soldiers raided the Burmese Village on the West bank of River Irrawaddy
and then entered the Vilage Monastery Hall for they knew very well that
frightened villagers had abandoned their homes and taken refuge inside there.
Fearfull for his life a 37-year-old villager named Kan-Gaung immediately crawled underneath a low-bed nearby and tried to hide from the demonic Myanmar soldiers. He then heard the door-opening and saw the legs of Myanmar soldiers, some in army-uniform trousers and others in black jeans, entering the Monastery Hall.
“Where the hell’s Maung Nyan? Where are the PDFs? Where are the bloody guns?” Yelled aloud the soldiers to the mass of villagers hiding inside the Hall. PDF is the NUG’s People Defence Force and Muang Nyan is the leader of Village PDF unit.
“We’re just hiding. We’d heard the gunshots, we know nothing,” replied some villagers and the enraged soldiers then ordered all the men to get outside. Later Kan Gaung heard many gunshots from outside. The massacre had started. Out of more than fifty villagers hiding inside, more than twenty males were taken out and brutally shot to death.
“I didn’t see the killings, but I’d heard clearly. One victim didn’t seem to be dead and one soldier yelled at others that the bastard was alive and still moving, and then I heard one gunshot. They are not humans, they are animals, mother fucking bastards,” added Kan Gaung the lone survivor.
How Did It Happen?
Latt-Htoke-Taw
Village is situated beside the Mandalay-MonYwar Highway at twelve-mile-west of
Myint-Mu Town. There are atleast three Myanmar Army camps at two-mile-north of the
Latt-Htoke-Taw Village. The Nat-Ye-Gan Village, Gway-Bin-Daw Village, and Mint Mu Road
intersection.
On the night of
May-10 the Village PDF unit got the intelligence that a 100-strong Myanmar Army’s
war column had left the Nat-Ye-Gan Army Camp in Chaung Oo Tonship, been
travelling to their village.
The PDF men
alerted the village and evacuated the majority out off the village. But some
fifty-odd villagers tried to take refuge inside the two Buddhist monasteries at
the East-End and the West-End of the Village, believing that the so-called Buddhist
Myanmar soldiers would have mercy on them. They were completely wrong.
The
heavily-armed 100-odd Myanmar soldiers mercilessly slaughtered 33 of them, one female
and 32 males aged thirteen to eighty, inside
the two monstery compounds.The Myanmar soldiers then burned down the village to
the ground and left the village happily after their evil deeds.
Why Did It Happen? Why?
According to Kan
Gaung the lone survivor, the Myanmar soldiers inside the Monastery Hall were loudly
yelling themselves that their old Captain, who supposedly was 67 and retired
and then forced back into active duty just recently because of widespread manpower-shortages,
was wounded fatally in recent ambush by Maung Nyan-led PDF unit from the Village.
(The old captain was on an army pension and he refused to come back to Army and serve, but the Myanmar Army suspended his pension despite his 30-odd years military service and thus he had to come back to serve again at an old age and now he was dead.)
They also
claimed three of their comrades were killed just the day before by the PDF
snipers. Thus they came there today to avenge his and those other soldiers’
deaths. They definitely were looking particularly for Maung Nyan the Village PDF
Leader.
Later in a
telephone interview with Khit-Thit Media 30-yers-old Maung Nyan said he felt sorry
for the innocent people killed as the revenge for his action against the oppressive
Myanmar Army. “We did ambush one of their
convoys coming from Chinese-owned nearby Wan-Bao Copper Mine Project and we killed
three and wounded two,” added Maung Nyan.
The war-column that raided Lat-Htoke-Taw Village came from one of the Myanmar Army battalions guarding the giant Myanmar-Wan Bao Copper Mine nearby and it's a well-known fact that the atrocious war crimes are being committed to protect that major Chinese interest in Myanmar.
