‘I had to cut off the head, bro’: Myanmar soldiers swap slaughter stories

By Khin Maung Soe and Nayrein Kyaw for RFA Burmese

June 17, 2022 - Two armed men stand behind a tangle of bodies leaking blood which congeals in the dust. Each of the five victims is blindfolded, hands tied behind their back, and appear to have been killed by gunfire or a blade to the throat. The armed men – one with his rifle slung over his shoulder and the other smoking a cigarette – strike a nonchalant pose that is recorded for posterity in a series of grisly photos captured on a soldier’s phone.

These graphic images are among a cache of files recently obtained by RFA Burmese that document atrocities apparently committed by soldiers during military operations in Myanmar’s war-torn Sagaing region. The files include a video in which those two same armed men joke about how many people they have killed, and how they have killed them.

The contents were retrieved from a cell phone that was found by a villager in Sagaing’s Ayadaw township where the military had been conducting raids amid an offensive against the anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary group. An intermediary who obtained the video and photos forwarded them to RFA in Washington.

Among the many images is one of about 30 men with their hands tied behind their backs on the grounds of a monastery. Two of what appear to be the same men are seen dead in the photos taken a day later of the five victims of execution. 

Another series of photos shows a young man with his arms bound behind him, his face puffy and bloodied. An outstretched hand holds his chin up, forcing him to look into the camera, while a second hand holds a knife to his chest over his heart.

The images also include many ‘selfie’ photos of a soldier, seemingly the phone’s owner. He also features in the video and the photos of the dead bodies.

The 10-and-a-half-minute video shows him and two other men mugging for the camera and chatting in crude terms about the number of people they have killed and what they did with the bodies. The phone’s owner, who wears a wide smile and sometimes slurs his words, has a hand grenade pinned to his chest. More armed men can be seen in the background.

“You said you killed 26 people. How did you kill them? Just shooting them with a gun?” asks the phone’s owner of one of his fellow soldiers.

“Of course, we killed them with our guns. But not with our hands,” the soldier responds.

“For us, we even killed a lot by slitting their throats. I, myself, killed five,” the phone’s owner says.

“I have never [slit throats],” the third soldier chimes in. 

The second soldier then reconsiders his personal tally of death. “I think eight,” he says. “I killed eight [by slitting throats].” 

Clues in the images

A closer look at the photos provides proof that these men serve in Myanmar’s military. Soldiers in the photos sport the arm badge of the Myanmar Army and, in at least one photo, the Northwest Military Command based in Sagaing. Soldiers are seen with bamboo baskets normally used as backpacks by junta soldiers. Numbers on rifle butts in the photos even help identify one military unit.

RFA asked Capt. Lin Htet Aung, a defector from the military who has joined the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), about the evidence. He said the numbers “708” and “4” seen on the guns indicate they are from the 4th Company of the Light Infantry Battalion 708 (708 LIB). The battalion belongs to the Yangon-based Military Operations Command No. 4 (MOC-4) which has been deployed to Sagaing and Magway regions and may be involved in joint operations there, he said.

When contacted about the material recovered from the cell phone, junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that authorities had opened a probe into the matter.

“Regarding these incidents, we can respond only after investigation in the field,” he said. “We are now investigating it.”