More than a dozen pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia members who travelled to Sagaing Region’s Salingyi Township to help junta troops protect Chinese-invested copper mines were arrested by the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) on Thursday, according to the PDFs.
The PDFs that form the Union Liberation Front arrested 14 Pyu Saw Htee militia fighters who had been trained by the Southwest Military Command in Ayeyarwady Region’s Thabaung Township. The militia members said they were going to receive additional training when they arrived inside the mining compounds, according to the Union Liberation Front.
Three copper mines in the township—Letpadaung, Sabetaung and Kyesintaung—are owned and operated by Chinese company Wanbao and its two subsidiaries, Myanmar Wanbao Mining Copper Ltd and Myanmar Yang Tse Copper Ltd, in partnership with military-owned Myanma Economic Holdings Ltd.
Regime troops based in the mining compounds have killed civilians in nearby villages and torched their houses since soon after the coup, causing thousands of people to frequently flee before, during or after raids.
Local resistance groups say troops protecting the mines had called in the Pyu Saw Htee militias for reinforcements and had planned to train them.
Myanmar’s regime began recruiting and arming members of pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militias to supplement its forces after the anti-regime resistance movement emerged in response to the February 2021 coup. The Pyu Saw Htee militias, who are recruited at the township level, have been compared to vigilante groups.
“The troop levels for the military are quite low. That is why the Pyu Saw Htee militias were being gathered as recruits,” a spokesperson for the Union Liberation Front told The Irrawaddy.
He warned Pyu Saw Htee militia members not to come to the Salingyi Township to aid the junta’s atrocities.
The arrested militia members were transferred to the township People’s Security Force on Thursday for legal action, the spokesperson said.
On August 16, the junta troops killed and mutilated six residents of Yinmabin and Pale townships in Sagaing Region and dumped their corpses under the North Yamar Bridge. Earlier this month, Wanbao seized neighboring farmland and fenced-off farms in old Wethmay Village to the east of the mining compound.
