Scores of Myanmar Junta Troops Hit by Land Mines While Raiding Resistance Member’s Home
By The Irrawaddy 8 December 2022
Around 50 soldiers were attacked by land mines while raiding and trying to seal off the house of a member of the anti-regime People’s Defense Force (PDF) in Kale in the resistance stronghold of Sagaing Region.
The regime soldiers arrived at the family home of Ma Chaw Su Aung, a medic of Kalay (Kale) PDF Battalion 6, in Kale on Wednesday after learning that the owner was a PDF member.
Ma Chaw Su Aung said she was tipped off by someone that her house would be raided and sealed off by regime troops. The 21-year-old fled her home before they arrived but wanted to leave something behind “to teach a lesson to the regime soldiers that they can’t enter people’s homes as they wish.”
So, she planted land mines at her house.
“I have abandoned everything since joining the revolution. I will do anything to crush them,” Ma Chaw Su Aung told The Irrawaddy.
When the regime troops entered the home on Wednesday, a number of them stepped on the land mines, causing serious injuries.
Ma Chaw Su Aung said the only information she could provide was that many soldiers were wounded, adding that more detailed information would be released by the battalion.
“The soldiers were busy sending their injured members to the hospital,” she told The Irrawaddy.
The Myanmar regime has sealed off the houses of many pro-democracy activists, National League for Democracy (NLD) members and PDF members since last year.
To date, at least 900 houses and other buildings have been sealed off by the junta since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPP), a rights group.
After suffering the land mine attack, the regime troops torched the two-story house, which Ma Chaw Su Aung inherited from her parents. However, only half of the house was burned, as Kale residents and PDF members put out the fire.
“I can rebuild the house. My intention is to kill dogs,” she said, referring to junta soldiers.
Ma Chaw Su Aung was a second-year university student from Kale before joining the Kalay PDF. She joined protests after the coup in February last year and said she had no intention of picking up a weapon at first. However, she joined the Kalay PDF after a protest camp she was part of in Tarhan Ward, Kale Town was violently crushed by regime troops in March 2021.
The Tahan Ward battle marked the beginning of the fighting between the military regime and pro-democracy activists in what has become known as the Spring Revolution.
