Over 80 junta soldiers escaped from prison in the northern Shan State capital of Lashio, which is held by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), in the last week of October.
The prisoners of war including an officer and two sergeants escaped from the prison although it was guarded by MNDAA police, a Lashio resident told The Irrawaddy.
“They scaled the prison wall at midnight. I heard they used the phones of prison guards to contact the outside,” the source said. “I think it happened because MNDAA personnel did not know prison procedures well and security wasn’t good enough.”
The junta soldiers’ escape was made easy because the prison’s security system was destroyed during the fighting, the source added.
The MNDAA combed wards in Lashio town and the compound of the seized Northeastern Command but only recaptured five escapees while the rest remain at large.
The armed group did not make the news of their escape public. A woman resident of Lashio said she was concerned for her safety now that the junta soldiers are on the run.
“We are afraid and worried because several dozen prisoners of war escaped,” she said. “The MNDAA deploys security guards at town entrances, but they don’t impose tight checks.”
Normality has been restored in Lashio town, and the central market and shops have reopened, but residents still fear junta air raids, she added.
The MNDAA has imposed a communication shutdown since early October in response to the junta’s aerial attacks, according to locals. The group has also detained over 20 people accused of being junta informants and is questioning some business owners.
After capturing Lashio and the Northeastern Command on Aug. 3, the MNDAA handed over more than 1,000 junta soldiers and their families to regime-held Mongyai but detained senior officers and other prisoners of war.
A leaked recording from October revealed that Chinese special envoy to Myanmar Deng Xijun said in a secret meeting with Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army, that China does not recognize the MNDAA’s control of Lashio and will only lift its border blockade if the group hands the town back to the junta.
Following junta boss Min Aung Hlaing’s first visit to China last week, a coalition of armed groups led by the UWSA —the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC)—is holding a meeting in Wa State.
The talks reportedly focus on rebel-held Lashio and Nawnghkio in northern Shan State and Mogoke in Mandalay Region, which the military regime has been trying to recapture.
The FPNCC brings together seven ethnic armed organizations based in northern Myanmar: the UWSA, MNDAA, Arakan Army (AA), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), National Democratic Alliance Army and Shan State Progress Party.
