“We didn’t even fly over Demoso”
Four students aged between 11 and 13 were killed when junta fighter jets bombed two schools in Karenni (Kayah) State’s Demoso Township on Monday.
The attacks took place during morning school hours in Dawsieei and Loi Nan Hpa villages.
Despite ample photographic evidence and confirmation by witnesses – who said they saw the jets flying above them before they were bombed – the regime denied the air attacks. Junta media said on Monday night that reports of fatal air raids were false news spread by illegal media as propaganda.
The junta’s military did not even fly aircraft over Demoso Township that day, junta media claimed.
The Karenni State Consultative Council and UNICEF have strongly condemned the bombing.
The Feb. 5 attack was, however, not the first time junta jets bombed schools. Many schools in Sagaing and Magwe regions, as well as in Chin, Karen and Karenni states, have been forced to dig trenches to protect against air strikes. Thirteen people, including seven children, were killed in an aerial attack on a school in Let Yet Kone Village in Sagaing Region’s Depayin Township in 2022.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a total of 20 children under 18 years of age have been killed by junta air raids since January.
“We didn’t burn them alive”
Two members of the resistance group Yaw Defense Force were burned alive by junta-affiliated Pyu Saw Htee militias in Myauk Khin Yan Village in Magwe Region’s Gangaw Township on Nov. 7 last year.
After the video clip showing the two resistance fighters being burned alive went viral this week, the regime said its “community-based defense teams” had nothing to do with the crime.
The two resistance fighters were burned alive while being hung from a tree. The video shows evidence that they were tortured before they were burned alive. They have severe injuries and are covered in blood. Their hands and legs are bound by iron chains as they are dragged to the tree.
While junta soldiers captured by revolutionary forces are treated well according to laws governing prisoners of war, the two anti-junta fighters were burned alive in public, dying in agony.
The village is controlled by Pyu Saw Htee militias, reportedly under the direction of “Bullet” Hla Swe, a former lawmaker of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. The militias are notorious for violence against civilians, including shelling into the village and others nearby. In March 2022, two civilians were tortured to death in the village.
Around the time of the execution last year, pro-junta Telegram channels reported the capture of two resistance fighters and showed their photos. They match those of the two young men burned alive.
But on Wednesday – after the video clip of junta brutality provoked public outrage – the regime said no resistance fighters had been captured in the village.
The motive for the crime was financial and territorial disputes between two People’s Defense Force groups, it said. Some of the men involved in the execution, however, were wearing junta military uniforms.
