The Arakan Army (AA) has confessed that its troops killed two captive Myanmar junta soldiers in Kyauktaw Township, Rakhine State, after a rights group exposed the extrajudicial killings.
AA spokesman Khaing Thukha said the incident occurred during the group’s offensive on the 9th Military Operations Command in Kyauktaw on February 7 last year. Action had been taken against the perpetrators, he said.
Khaing Thukha highlighted abuses committed by Myanmar’s military against civilians in Rakhine.
“Our militias could not control their anger when they captured terrorist soldiers who had arbitrarily arrested, tortured and killed their relatives. So they committed the killings as a form of retaliation, violating military discipline. We have punished all the perpetrators, including some junior commanders, involved in this incident,” he said.
The spokesman did not specify the punishments.
The AA statement came after the Thai-based Fortify Rights group on Thursday urged the International Criminal Court to investigate the case.
Ejaz Min Khant of the group told the media: “Torturing and summarily executing civilians or captured enemy soldiers are war crimes.”
A leaked video spread on social media showed several AA soldiers and other men in plainclothes beating and kicking two prisoners of war near a grave before sliting their throats.
Last year, the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar’s human rights Tom Andrews expressed concerns over allegations of killings and other rights violations by the AA against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine.
Khaing Thukha said the AA backs its policy not to kill prisoners of war and pledged to prevent future occurrences, claiming that hundreds of junta soldiers have been treated well in captivity.
Regime airstrikes continue on AA-held territory in Rakhine. At least 26 civilians, including children, were killed and many others injured when the regime bombed Ramree and Kyauktaw townships on January 8 and 11.
The AA said 28 captive junta soldiers and their family members were killed and 25 others injured in a junta airstrike on a detention center in Mrauk-U Township on January 18.
Extrajudicial killings of captured junta soldiers have been reported across Myanmar although the numbers are dwarfed by those killed by the regime and its allies.
A video leaked last month showed an anti-regime Ye Belu group commander beheading a junta detainee in Mon State. The civilian National Unity Government said it had formed an investigation team to probe the case.
