Police guard outside a Buddhist monastery where army supporters took refuge following a protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar, February 18, 2021. YE AUNG THU / AFP
Burma’s ruling junta and armed opposition groups have accused each other of the massacre of around 30 people in a Buddhist monastery during new clashes in the east of the country.
A violent civil conflict, which has killed nearly 3,000 people according to the UN, has torn Burma since the February 2021 putsch against the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The army, regularly accused of war crimes, carries out fierce repression against its dissidents, while a third of the territory still escapes its total control.
Soldiers burst into Nam Neint, a village in Shan state, on Saturday afternoon, according to the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), one of several people’s defense groups (PDF) that have branched out into Burma after the Coup d’Etat. The army executed 33 people, including three Buddhist monks, near a religious site where they had been hiding from the violence of the clashes, according to the same source. The Pa-O National Defense Forces, another anti-junta group, said 22 civilians were killed, including three monks and a woman. Its members specified that the lifeless bodies of seven other people still remained to be identified, which could increase the balance sheet.
“It’s the fault of the rebel groups”
A video allegedly taken at the scene, obtained by AFP from the Karenni Revolutionary Union (KRU), which is fighting the ruling army, shows a dozen corpses piled up near a bloodstained wall, and riddled with bullet holes. An influential projunta newsgroup on Telegram released another series of photos of lifeless bodies lying on the ground – only crude guns were visible near them, unlike the video provided by KRU.
Some 24 rebels were killed by bullets in the head, according to these army supporters. AFP was unable to independently verify the charges. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun confirmed that rebels had been killed in clashes that took place on Saturday in Nam Neint. He admitted that civilians had also lost their lives, without saying how many, saying it was the fault of the rebel groups.
The charges against the Burmese army are “fake news“, he asserted. The situation in Burma is adisaster getting worsesaid UN human rights chief Volker Türk in early March.
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