When news broke early this week that resistance forces had arrested Myanmar regime pilot Major Khaing Thant Moe, most Myanmar people were thrilled, and immediately wondered what kind of punishment he would earn.
The 43-year-old served in the junta’s notorious Myanmar Air Force (MAF), which has waged a bloody campaign of air strikes against civilians and resistance forces across the country since the coup in 2021. According to the latest available figures, the MAF carried out 1,427 air strikes across Myanmar, killing at least 634 civilians, including children, between the coup and April this year.
Khaing Thant Moe was captured—to the people’s delight—by resistance forces on Nov. 19 near the border of Kayah and Karen states, a little over a week after a Karenni armed group reported that it shot down a junta K-8W fighter jet during a clash in Hpruso Township on Nov. 11, the day the anti-regime offensive dubbed Operation 11.11 was launched in Kayah State. He is the first active-duty regime pilot to be arrested by resistance forces.
Maj. Khaing Thant Moe and his co-pilot Lieutenant Zarni Maung ejected from the plane and went missing after it was shot down. The fuselage of the crashed aircraft was found in Taungoo District in Karen National Union-controlled territory on Nov. 13, and Maj. Khaing Thant Moe was captured after nine days on the run, after he asked for food from a Hpruso resident, who informed the Karenni resistance forces, Burma VJ news reported.
Currently, the pilot is in the custody of Karenni resistance forces. On Tuesday, Kayah State’s revolutionary governing body, the Karenni State Interim Executive Council, announced that legal action would be taken against Maj. Khaing Thant Moe. It added that resistance forces were still looking for Zarni Maung.
Who is Maj. Khaing Thant Moe?
Maj. Khaing Thant Moe was stationed at Bago Region’s Taungoo Air Base. A graduate of the 44th intake of the Myanmar military’s Defense Services Academy, he served as both a combat pilot involved in aerial attacks, as well as a flight instructor who taught DSA trainees to fly.
He won a literary excellence award at the DSA and had a good record in the MAF, according to Naung Yoe, a former sergeant and Air Force defector.
“He was a flight instructor. He had a moderate attitude when teaching the trainees,” Naung Yoe told The Irrawaddy.
Another Air Force defector, former captain Zay Thu Aung, said: “We would start our pre-flight briefings at 6 a.m. Maj. Khaing Thant Moe was always the first to arrive.”
Regardless of his reputation within the military, his association with the MAF now brings him nothing but condemnation from the public.
“These are the dogs who killed civilians in Pazi Gyi, Ananpa and Let Yat Kone. They have to pay [for what they did],” a Yangon resident said, referring to three of the deadliest air strikes against civilians and anti-regime ethnic armed forces in Sagaing Region and Kachin State last year and this year.
The regime air strike on a school in Let Yat Kone Village in Sagaing’s Depayin Township in September 2022 killed 13 people, including seven children aged 9 to 16.
Moreover, 175 civilians including 42 children were killed in a regime aerial bombardment in Kantbalu Township’s Pazi Gyi Village on April 11 this year. It is the worst massacre by the Myanmar military to date.
Most recently, on Nov. 15, nearly a dozen civilians including eight children were killed in a Myanmar military aerial assault on Wai Luu Village in Matupi Township, Chin State.
Khaing Thant Moe is still being interrogated and it is not yet clear if he was personally involved in any of those attacks. It is hoped that any testimony he provides at his trial will shed light on the nature of the junta’s air assaults, and provide evidence of the regime’s crimes.
Khun Bedu, president of the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, said the pilot was being interrogated for information about the military’s operations.
“At the same time, Major Khaing Thant Moe is still alive and will continue to be afforded his basic rights,” Khun Bedu told The Irrawaddy.
Defector Naung Yoe said Khaing Thant Moe would be a valuable witness in any future legal action against military leaders who have ordered air strikes around the country. “That kind of person would make the best witness if he is sent to [testify before] international courts,” Naung Yoe told The Irrawaddy.
Regime lies
Immediately after the resistance forces shot down the K-8 fighter jet, junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun said the plane crashed due to a mechanical problem during a training flight. He also said the military had been in contact with the two pilots.
However, nine days since the Karenni revolutionary alliance forces issued a statement announcing the arrest of Khaing Thant Moe—along with a picture of him in custody—the junta has yet to utter a word about the two pilots.
