Great loss

On January 6, Pu Tui Dim, a human rights defender, journalist and former Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) colleague, was arrested by Myanmar junta soldiers while visiting his home village in northwestern Chin State’s Matupi Township. Nine other civilians from the same village, including a 13-year-old boy, were arrested alongside him.

A day later, my colleagues and I at the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) learned that Pu Tui Dim and others from his village were missing. Fearing the worst, we began a desperate scramble to establish contacts on the ground and gather information.

We soon learned that Pu Tui Dim and the villagers were detained by junta soldiers as they were travelling by motorbike through an area where junta forces have been fighting against the Chinland Defense Force, a pro-democracy armed group. With the military having cut phone lines and internet connections in the area, however, gathering further information and establishing their whereabouts proved to be an agonising effort. But just two days later, on January 9, our worst fears were confirmed. Our sources on the ground informed us that they had found the dead bodies of Pu Tui Dim and other villagers. Their hands were tied behind their backs. They were gagged. Some had had their throats slashed. Others had stab wounds to their abdomens.

This gruesome mass murder was just one example of the horror and destruction the military routinely brings upon the people of Myanmar as it desperately tries to cling to power a year after its coup. We at the CHRO have been documenting the situation on the ground in Myanmar’s northwest since the coup. Arbitrary arrests and detentions of civilians, torture, summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian neighbourhoods and towns, violent nighttime raids, and destruction of private property have all become daily occurrences across the entire region in the past year.

The regime’s reign of terror has pushed more and more people to take up arms against the military as a last resort. But as the armed resistance grew, the military’s attacks on the civilian population became more vicious. Tens of thousands have become internally displaced or fled to neighbouring India in a matter of months.

Meanwhile, the military has deliberately sought to obstruct the collection of evidence of its abuses. It has blocked mobile internet services in 24 townships in Myanmar’s northwest since September, and at times, shut down mobile phone networks, as well. On top of this, it has occasionally imposed martial law, including movement restrictions, to make it more dangerous for people to collect information on the ground.

The coup has emboldened the military, which was already accused of genocide for its treatment of the Rohingya, to kill and destroy anyone and anything in its path.

Excerpted: ‘A tribute to a human rights defender killed by Myanmar’s junta’ Courtesy: Aljazeera.com