Myanmar Spring Chronicle – December 23 Scenes
MoeMaKa, December 24 2022
A year after the massacre near Moso Village, Hpruso Township
On December 24 of last year, a total of 39 civilians, including young children, the elderly, and women, were shot and killed by military council troops and set on fire along with the cars they were riding in while they were fleeing the war between two villages. It was a tragic incident for the locals of Kayah state, who are mostly Christians, to lose so many lives on Christmas Eve, which is the most religious day of the year.
Since May last year, when the civil war was waging, that incident took place in December last year, when the battles in Kayah State, Sagaing Division, Chin State, northern Magway Division, Tanintharyi Division and Karen State were gradually escalating. After that incident, in comparison, the incident that killed about 30 villagers in Montaingpin Village of Sagaing Division also happened in May this year.
Looking at the incident in Hpruso Township, it is believed that the military council troops killed the victims, including children and women, on the pretext of accusing them of being supporters of the PDF armed forces, knowing that they were just civilians fleeing the war. This is not the first time that such war crimes have been committed during wars in Myanmar. There were numerous examples of what happened recently in Karen, Rakhine, and Shan states. Incidents of people being killed by an armed group when they turn against that group or being accused of being supporters of other armed groups are mostly committed by the military that has taken over the political power of the country. Sometimes, even the opposition’s armed groups have committed such acts in the history of Myanmar’s civil war.
The incidents committed against the Rohingya in Rakhine State are more than a civil war, but a genocide that has been carried out as a legal excuse to legitimize the killing by inciting hate speech that they are illegal immigrants from another country and of a different religion. This terrible genocide was committed by the Myanmar military, which is known as “Tatmadaw.” Now, after the military coup, they have been committing war crimes and killings under the pretext of being armed rioters, terrorists and assassins.
Here, the question may arise if there is a way to prevent the commission of war crimes. War crimes are committed by government organizations that are in control of power, but organizations that are armed even though they are not in power are more or less likely to commit crimes.
The armed organization holding power is committing crimes more systematically than the armed organization without power. They frequently erase the traces of the crimes they committed by erasing evidence and relocating the perpetrators from the scene of the crime to other locations. In this way, they used to make these war crimes and killings to be obscured and the information to not be disclosed and leaked. In the digital era, individual recorded images and videos are evidence that, sometimes unintentionally leak and reveal the identity of the perpetrators of mass killings. The incident in Montaingpin Village is an example of such an incident. Although not a massacre, the video of some PDF members allegedly killing a woman in Tamu town for being an informant is similar to the above incident.
It will be necessary to disclose the evidence of such crimes and to inform and make their members obey the moral laws of war and the rules that will be applied to civilians as the armed organization. Rather than being unaware of such information, the military council is using it as a tactic to discourage the public from supporting one side in the ongoing armed conflict.