Myanmar Spring Chronicle – August 11 Scenes
MoeMaKa, August 12, 2023
Possible consequences of a robbery in which a pregnant woman was shot dead in Monywa
On the evening of August 10, when a group of robbers broke into a house in the Htan Taw neighborhood in Monywa, they took a mobile phone and a motorcycle, pushed an elderly woman down, and shot the head of a 25-year-old pregnant woman called Ma Aye Nyein Thu near her pregnancy term with a gun, losing her life.
The Monywa Township people’s security force (Guardian Force), abbreviated as PaLaFa, released the news that the perpetrators were a group of 6 to 7 people from an urban guerrilla force based in Monywa. The video footage of the Monywa Township PaLaFa (Guardian Force) investigating the people accused of committing the robbery and murder has also been posted on social media. According to some news media and answers, the perpetrators of this robbery and murder with a gun were referred to as those from a local defense force or an urban guerilla force.
In the video footage of the investigation of those who are believed to have committed the robbery, there were statements of investigators saying that they might take the properties, arrest the people, but they shouldn’t kill anyone. This raised doubts as to whether the group that arrested and examined the perpetrators of that robbery and murder had known each other before. According to news reports, at around 10 o’clock on the night of the incident, the Monywa Township PaLaFa went to the village where the perpetrators lived and arrested them.
In the video footage of the investigation of the perpetrators of robbery and murder captured by the Monywa Township PaLaFa, there were also beatings and kicking, as well as statements preventing them from saying names when answering certain questions, which raises doubts as to whether the investigators were aware of the circumstances of the perpetrators or those related to them. In the investigation, the beatings and kickings were considered to be common occurrences.
According to one news agency, the bandit killer group is a group disguised as a Monywa urban guerrilla group, while another news agency wrote that the group was created by the military council. In the current situation, the news agencies are not in a position where they can get information on the ground, but they report the news based on online communication, so the information presented is not certain to be correct. Now it is also a situation where we can only think in relation to the emerging evidence.
One thing that can be said is that after the military coup, weapons, whether handmade or not, can be purchased by paying a certain amount of money. There are armed groups with political ambitions that follow the military ethics (code of conduct) that armed groups must follow. But it is also possible that, rather than opposing the military council, armed groups that extort money in villages and townships, or carry out robberies may emerge.
In other words, after the military coup and the armed resistance attacks, if robberies and murders occurred, most of them could not be identified and disclosed. The law enforcement police have come under the control of the military council army, and they are no longer doing their main duty of law enforcement. Instead, they only work on issues relating to revolutionary forces and arrest and punish those who support them. In other words, the law enforcement mechanism in cities and villages is gradually becoming weaker, and in some places, it has become broken state.
Villages in areas of armed conflict are the worst hit. Among such regions, conflict areas in Central Myanmar, such as Sagaing, Magway, and Mandalay regions, are in a worse situation than the ethnically armed areas. The situation where armed groups are separated, the situation where armed groups do not have a long history but have emerged recently, the situation where they do not understand how to work on the law and order of the area, and the situation where one group is unable to influence another group, lead to the conditions for such robberies and murders to occur. Even if such cases were to happen, there is no position to take legal action, and there are no prisons or courts to give punishment. So, there is a possibility that they will be given the death penalty if they confess to being beaten up, or they will be released at a time when there is no public attention if they are related to someone or a group doing jurisdiction.
Among the people living in the villages, those who can afford to move to the towns Among the people who live in the towns, the wealthy ones are moving to safer places in the big cities or to neighboring countries to live temporarily.
As the armed revolution has been going on, it is important to be able to maintain as much as possible so that such situations do not occur. While the people try to live under the lack of law enforcement, the rise of the side effects of armed attacks, such as robberies, murders, and rapes, may lead to the support and forces for the revolution being depleted.