Day: April 22, 2023

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They lop off people’s heads and mutilate bodies to instill terror. They torture victims to death.

They seem fearless in battle, surging forward when under fire. 

Officially, they make up part of the 99th Light Infantry Battalion of the Myanmar military. But to most people, they are known as the “Ogre” column, a unit of killers notorious for their cruelty in a military already known for its brutality.

And they have been criss-crossing Myanmar’s heartland, killing rebel fighters and massacring villagers believed to be supporting them, terrorizing everyone in their path.

“What makes this column different is that they are specially trained to kill people,” said Nway Oo, a member of a resistance group in Myaung township. “They chop off the heads and ears of victims in cold blood.”

“They appear ghostly in battles, too,” he said. “They move forward in battles no matter how risky the situation is or how much they are under attack.”

Myanmar’s military has faced stiff resistance from ordinary men and women who have taken up arms to form People’s Defense Force bands to fight junta troops since the military’s coup two years ago. 

The Ogres’ atrocities are meant to terrorize their foes, who often have little combat training and aren’t usually well-armed.

It’s all part of psychological warfare that was developed by the country’s generals known as “Sit Oo Bi Lu,” the “First wave of brutal attack,” or “Yakkha Byu Har” – “The Ogre Strategy,” a former military captain who defected to the rebel side since the junta’s takeover.

“Brutal acts by the junta troops, such as beheading people and burning down civilian properties, are intended to frighten the people,” said the captain, who goes by Nat Thar.

“This is a psychological tactic to scare the people into thinking that they don’t want to be the one beheaded when the junta’s 99th Division enters their village, to make them fear head-on conflict, although they belong to a population of tens of thousands,” he said.

Battleground Sagaing

Some of the fiercest resistance against the military has been in the northern Sagaing region, and in recent weeks the “Ogre” battalion has been attacking dozens of villages and rebel bases there in townships such as Ye-U, Khin-U, Taze, Myinmu and Myaung.

On March 30, the column raided a PDF base under the command of Capt. Bo Sin Yine near the village of Swae Lwe Oh.

The junta troops soon overwhelmed the rebel fighters, and soldiers then took Bo Sin Yine, a 31-year-old former corporal in the township’s Fire Brigade, and his fighters captive.

Footage taken by a drone operated by the Civilian’s Defense and Security Organization of Myaung, CDSOM, captured a junta soldier beheading Bo Sin Yine, whose name means “wild elephant,” and carrying his head away on his shoulder.

A few days later, Bo Sin Yine’s wife and a team of villagers discovered his body abandoned near the jungle. In addition to beheading him, junta soldiers had lopped off his arms and legs.

“They beheaded him and took away his head, but it wasn’t just him. They took away the heads of many people in other townships, too,” she said of her husband, who became the deputy battalion commander of the PDF No.1 in Sagaing.

Prior to entering Myaung township, the column raided Myinmu’s Let Ka Pin village, where it killed 10 civilians and disemboweled local PDF leader Kyaw Zaw before chopping off his head and limbs, residents said. The column also killed 16 civilians it had taken as human shields to protect against landmines after raiding Sagaing township’s Tar Tai village.

Among the column’s members are soldiers the CDSOM has identified as Capt. Aung Hein Oo, Lt. Capt. Zaw Naing, Sgts. Zaw Set Win, Myint Zaw, Maung Naing, Soe Hlaing, Tun Zaw Myo, and Thein Tun; Lt. Sgts. Ye Yint Paing and Thiha Soe; Engineer Trooper Nay Lin, and Troopers Pyae Sone Aung, Min Thu, and Thant Zin.

‘They told us to pass a message’

In mid-March, the “Ogre” column crossed the Chindwin River from Sagaing into Magway region and made its way south to Yesagyo township, one of several areas under martial law as a hotbed of anti-junta resistance.

Early on the morning of March 19, the unit blocked all of the exits from Mee Laung Kyung Ywar Thit village and arrested some 140 residents who didn’t have time to flee.

By the end of the day, Ogre fighters had shot and killed a man in his 50s named Han, who worked as a cook feeding refugees of conflict, tortured a 47-year-old mentally disabled man named Sandra to death, and wounded a 16-year-old boy as he tried to escape, villagers told RFA.

Those captured in Mee Laung Kyaung Ywar Thit were added to prisoners from Sagaing’s Myaung township, where the unit had conducted its last raid, including inhabitants of Za Yat Ni, Min Hla, Thar Khaung Lay, Shwe Hlan, Myay Sun, and Sin Chay Yar villages.

Around 200 women were divided into two groups and held at the Taung Kuang Monastery on the outskirts of Mee Laung Kyun village, while another group of 40 men and teenage boys were placed under guard in civilian homes, sources who escaped the unit said.

A man who escaped after three days said that Ogre fighters confiscated his jewelry and interrogated him about the local PDF, claiming they had already crushed more than 20 of the group’s bases.

“We didn’t know if they would take us to the battlefront and force us to step on landmines or kill us before they left the village,” said the man, who declined to be named out of fear of reprisal.

“They told us to pass a message to our relatives to give up fighting, bury their weapons, and end their support for the PDF. But despite their threats, we will continue to fight against the regime until the end.”

Attempts to reach Aye Hlaing, the junta’s spokesman for Sagaing region, and junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment on the reported actions of the Ogre column went unanswered, as did efforts to contact the junta’s information team.

Than Soe Naing, a political analyst, told RFA that the tactics of the Ogre column represent the “next level” in the junta’s violence against the people of Myanmar and must be stopped.

“Such inhumane actions against individuals can be regarded as international war crimes,” he said, suggesting that the perpetrators should be held accountable by an international court of law.

Seeking justice for victims

Kyaw Win, executive director of the U.K.-based Myanmar Human Rights Network, said his organization is systematically documenting the junta’s atrocities for just such a case.

“The junta is committing horrible and disheartening war crimes, in violation of existing … laws,” he said.

“Before long, we will be able to prosecute the perpetrators, who are officials at all levels in the military.”

In the meantime, the wife of Bo Sin Yine, who was decapitated by the Ogre column in Myaung township last month, said that she will not be able to rest until her husband and other victims receive justice.

“I need justice for him – the crime they committed was cruel and savage,” she said. “These days, the whole country knows about the atrocious brutality of [junta chief] Min Aung Hlaing.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

New rules governing the transfer of rural land in China have sparked concerns that the ruling Communist Party may be gearing up for the mass confiscation and reallocation of farmland in the name of “stabilizing the grain supply,” Radio Free Asia has learned.

The Ministry of Agriculture announced this week it will roll out a pilot scheme to “standardize” the transfer of rural property rights, as well as “strengthening supervision and management” over the use of rural land in China, which is typically leased to farmers on 30-year “household responsibility” contracts, with the ownership remaining with the government.

The move comes after the administration of supreme party leader Xi Jinping made it easier in 2016 for farmers to be bought out of household responsibility leases, to encourage farmers to relocate to urban areas to reduce rural poverty. 

China declared in November 2020 that it had eliminated extreme poverty, with analysts attributing the change in statistics to the mass relocation of younger migrant workers to cities, under strong official encouragement.

Under the new land rules, officials are expected to “give full play to government leadership” via controversial “agricultural management” enforcement officials, who critics fear will send the country back to Mao-era collective farming and micromanagement of people’s daily lives.

Analysts and farmers said that the main point of the additional controls is the tightening of state control over the supply of grain and to facilitate the transfer of rural land away from farmers if needed.

Food security

The move comes amid an ongoing government campaign to “stabilize the grain supply” and other moves to ensure food security, including revamping moribund Mao-era food co-ops and ordering the construction of state-run canteens.

The rules insist on “disciplined transactions” including supervision of contract-signing and “certification,” and could pave the way for the mass reallocation of farmland in future, analysts said.

A rural resident of the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Zhang for fear of reprisals said he had recently found that farmers in his hometown now need a permit to farm land already leased to them.

“I went back home and the neighbors told me that you now need a permit to till the land,” Zhang said.

He blamed the “national food crisis” for the move, saying it effectively means that rural residents can no longer have friends and neighbors take care of their land when they migrate into the cities to look for work.

“When my relatives and friends would go to look for work, they would have others till their land for them, with no need for any kind of contract,” Zhang said. “Then, they could just pick it up again immediately if their work ended and they went back to live in the countryside.”

“That’s no longer possible due to the serious nature of the national food crisis,” he said.

Another major land reform

Financial commentator Cai Shenkun said the scope of the pilot scheme is unprecedented.

“This is another major land reform [following on from 2016], and it’s worth observing whether the next step will be to roll it out to all rural land governed by household responsibility contracts,” Cai said.

“Given the involvement of the agricultural management officials who are now empowered to enforce the law, I think it has something to do with the next step, which will be the confiscation and reallocation of land,” he said.

Agricultural management officials are among a slew of local officials empowered in a July 2021 directive to enforce laws and regulations without the involvement of the police.

There are growing signs of unease around the new breed of rural “enforcer.”

Netease and Sina Weibo’s news channels reported on Wednesday that a team of agricultural management officials seized two truck-loads of live pigs and sent the animals for slaughter on the grounds that quarantine regulations hadn’t been followed.

After that, the farmers complained that they had received no money for the carcases, and that the trucks hadn’t been returned to them.

Photos of the equipment issued to the “enforcers” showed first-aid kits, mobile phone signal jammers and stab-proof vests.

‘A new devil’

The reports prompted comments complaining of intrusive management of farmers’ lives, and asking if the agricultural enforcers were “a new devil for the New Era,” in a satirical reference to one of supreme leader Xi Jinping’s ideological buzzwords.

A farmer from the southwestern province of Sichuan who gave only the surname Sen said the enforcers were also active in his part of the country.

“They are bringing in this policy now, which is evil,” Sen said. “The agricultural management teams have so much power.” 

“They are descending on the countryside and making life hell for ordinary people with all this rectification.”

Cai’s perception of the new rural management teams was similar to Sen’s and to comments seen online by Radio Free Asia, and he likened them to the widely hated urban management enforcement teams, or chengguan, who are often filmed beating up street vendors in the name of civic pride.

“Now they are sending these so-called agricultural management teams into countless households, and into the fields,” he said.

“They came into being, like the urban management officials before them, because when farmers aren’t cooperating, local township and village officials don’t want to show their faces, or get involved in beating people up or demolishing stuff,” he said. 

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.