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Cruelty, suffering, and escape: Myanmar at war
December 16, 2024
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An innocent villager dangles from a rope tied to a tree, his arms painfully bound behind his back, as a campfire crackles beneath him. The harrowing scene unfolds under the watchful gaze of two soldiers allied with Myanmar’s junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), their expressions cold and unmoving. The man's desperate cries pierce the air: “It’s too hot! Please help! Can anyone hear me?”
This grim portrait of torture and dehumanization illustrates the war crimes committed by the SAC against Myanmar's civilian population, where cruelty is wielded as a weapon to instill fear and suppress dissent. This incident was captured in a video by civilians in the Shan ethnic community. Toward the end the man shouts “Please, let me go. I want to go back to my family.”
Human rights abuses and war crimes in Myanmar have escalated into systematic atrocities, with civilians often deliberately targeted in the ongoing conflict, according to the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM). Addressing the Human Rights Council, Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the IIMM, highlighted the shocking scale of violence, including airstrikes on civilian areas such as night markets, weddings, schools, and monasteries.
Recent attacks reportedly killed a dozen civilians, including a pregnant woman and two children. The IIMM has documented widespread torture, sexual violence, and crimes against detainees, with testimonies describing beatings, electric shocks, and gang rapes.
The crisis, which intensified after the February 2021 military coup, has left thousands dead, millions displaced, and civilian infrastructure in ruins. Ethnic armed groups have seized key territories, while the junta has responded with heavy artillery, aerial bombings, and brutal repression, exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe that has displaced over 3 million people within Myanmar and forced tens of thousands to flee as refugees.
Behind the appalling statistics are real people with faces, names, and stories. The man hanging over the fire in the viral video is Loung Wa La, a 55-year-old Shan villager and the headman of Ban Kyong, a small village in Ban Yerng, a sub-township of Laikha Township in Southern Shan State.
Loung Wa La’s story was brought to Thailand by Nang Hom, a Shan woman from Ban Kyong who was forced to flee. After arriving at the Koung Jor Shan Refugee Camp in November 2024, she recounted that, in early 2023, an unknown group had planted landmines near her village. Shortly afterward, soldiers from two ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) arrived to investigate who was responsible. These groups were the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N), the armed wing of the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP), and the United Wa State Army (UWSA)—two powerful forces that have maintained a ceasefire with the junta. However, they are also complicit in enforcing and carrying out many of the repressive policies under which Shan civilians continue to suffer.
The soldiers dragged Loung Wa La into the jungle, demanding he reveal who had planted the landmines. Despite his repeated insistence that he didn’t know, they resorted to torture. They tied him with ropes, hung him from a tree, and lit a fire beneath him. Enduring relentless questioning and unimaginable brutality, Loung Wa La still could not provide the answers they sought. After an hour of excruciating torment, the soldiers burned him alive.
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Nang Hom, the 38-year-old Shan woman who brought Loung Wa La’s story to Thailand, represents a more typical example of how lives have been utterly destroyed by the war. Along with her family—her husband, Sai Tee, their 11-year-old daughter, and 10-month-old baby—she now resides in the Koung Jor Shan Refugee Camp. This camp, located just a few hundred meters on the Thai side of the border, is not sanctioned by the UN. As a result, its residents receive very little food or material support and live under the constant threat of deportation back to Burma. Yet, for Nang Hom, this precarious and difficult existence is still preferable to the horrors she faced on the Burmese side of the border.
“While I was in Shan State, I had no stable place to live. My family and I had to keep moving from place to place to avoid pressure from armed groups. Sometimes we stayed in Ban Yerng, other times in Laikha or Mong Kueng. But now, all those areas are under the control of the SSPP and UWSA,” Nang Hom explained.
“Before the SSPP and UWSA arrived in our area, we lived without fear. We were free to travel and could go wherever we wanted,” she continued. “Now, anytime we want to leave the village, we must ask for their permission.”
The permission is not free. Villagers must pay 1,000 kyat—about 12 cents USD—for a permit each time they wish to leave. For many, even this modest amount is an unbearable hardship.
She went on to say that the military had “set up checkpoints at the entrances and exits of the village.” When relatives visited from other villages, the soldiers at these checkpoints would interrogate them extensively. “What’s more,” Nang Hom added, “villagers have to prove they know someone in the village. If they can’t provide proof, the soldiers arrest them, demand money, and sometimes torture them.”
“Living in my hometown has become risky and dangerous. This is why we had to leave,” she explained.
Nang Hom recounted how, in areas controlled by the UWSA and SSPP, soldiers forced parents to sell their daughters. “When there is no fighting, SSPP and UWSA soldiers move from village to village, searching for food and young women,” she explained.
In Nang Hom’s village, soldiers entered the home of 14-year-old Ying Hseng Kham, where she lived with her parents. “The soldiers told her parents, ‘Your daughter is beautiful. We want her to be our wife,’” Nang Hom said. When her father objected, they offered him 1,500,000 kyat (about $700 USD). Even then, her father refused.
According to Nang Hom, the soldiers then placed a stack of money and a gun on the table in front of the parents and asked, “Will you choose the money or the gun?”
Seeing no other option, the parents reluctantly accepted the money. The soldiers took their daughter away in a pickup truck, assuring them, “We will send your daughter back in about three days.” However, three days later, they returned Ying Hseng Kham’s lifeless body to her devastated family.
When news of this tragedy spread through the village, panic gripped the community. Young people fled in fear, with some escaping to Thailand and others seeking refuge in parts of Shan State not under SSPP and UWSA control. These horrors are compounded by the relentless airstrikes, drone attacks, and artillery barrages that have become grim realities of life in Burma, driving millions to seek refuge in neighboring Thailand.
For those displaced within Burma, there is no safety; they remain targets, subject to killings or rapes by soldiers. Meanwhile, those who manage to escape to Thailand face a different kind of despair—stateless and without opportunities to work, study, or rebuild their lives. They are left to languish, waiting for the 75-year-long war to end, all while living under the constant threat of being forcibly returned to the nightmare they fled.
Gaza is not the only place where civilians live in fear and die unnoticed. Have you heard about these atrocities before?
Antonio Graceffo, PhD, China-MBA MBA, is a China economic analyst teaching economics at the American University in Mongolia. He has spent 20 years in Asia and is the author of six books about China. His writing has appeared in The Diplomat, South China Morning Post, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, Penthouse, Shanghai Institute of American Studies, Epoch Times, War on the Rocks, Just the News, and Black Belt Magazine.
Image credit: soldiers of the Tatmadaw / screenshot South China Morning Post
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