The Catholic Bishops Conference of Myanmar (CBCM) has demanded justice for Fr. Donald Martin Ye Naing Win, a 44-year-old Catholic priest who was brutally murdered in Sagaing Region last Friday.
“We urge those responsible to take appropriate action and ensure justice is served, so that such incidents do not occur again in the future,” CBCM Chairman Cardinal Charles Bo said in a press statement.
A priest from Mandalay Archdiocese, Fr. Donald Martin was killed by a group of armed men on Friday while serving in his assigned parish in Kangyitaw Village in Sagaing Region’s Shwebo Township, which is under resistance control.
He had been a priest for around seven years.
The perpetrators were arrested the same day, a member of the Shwebo Township People’s Administration told The Irrawaddy.
“The Shwebo People’s Defense Force has detained 10 members of the village defense team from the Ta-Ohn village who committed the murder,” he said.
He insisted this particular village defense team is not under the command of the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), but the regional military command under the NUG’s Defense Ministry will directly handle the case and make sure the perpetrators are given “fitting punishment.”
Cardinal Bo said he was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the murder and that the wrongdoing “is not something that can be easily forgotten.”
The funeral was held on Sunday in Pyin Oo Lwin.
Kangyitaw is on the border of Shwebo and Wetlet townships and has both a Christian church and a Buddhist monastery. The village suffered junta arson attacks in 2023.
A dozen villages between the Chindwin and Mu rivers in Buddhist-majority Sagaing are Catholic settlements.
In January 2023, junta troops torched the 129-year-old Assumption Church in the predominantly Christian village of Chan Thar in Ye-U Township. The regime did not even spare the home village of Cardinal Bo, torching Mone Hla in Khin-U Township in 2022.
