From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   In Myanmar, Atrocities Rise as Army Comes Under Pressure   
   By Richard C. Paddock, March 17, 2023, NY Times   
      
   When the soldiers from Myanmar’s notorious army reached the village of   
   Nanneint, the residents fled. Some took refuge in the basement of a nearby   
   Buddhist monastery.   
      
   “They thought the soldiers wouldn’t kill monks and people inside the   
   monastery,” said one resident, Khun Htwe, who fled to another village.   
      
   But the monastery was no sanctuary. On Sunday, ethnic rebels fighting   
   Myanmar’s military regime said they had found the bullet-riddled bodies of   
   22 people there, slaughtered by the army.   
      
   A gruesome video taken by a fighter with the Karenni Nationalities Defense   
   Force, posted on Facebook, shows the victims lying on bloodstained ground or   
   slumped against the monastery wall, which is pockmarked with dozens of bullet   
   holes. Among the dead    
   are three monks in saffron robes.   
      
   “It appears they were lined up and shot in the head,” Khu Ree Du, a rebel   
   soldier who saw the bodies, said by telephone.   
      
   Since Myanmar’s army — which has a long history of atrocities against   
   civilians — seized power two years ago, a resistance that began with   
   peaceful protests has become an increasingly well-armed rebellion. Analysts   
   who follow the conflict say the    
   army is coming under pressure as the rebels gain strength, and that it is   
   resorting to even bloodier tactics, like the killings near Nanneint.   
      
   “Now we are talking beheadings, disembowelings and massacres, and this   
   clearly reflects frustration and fury at field level in the military,” said   
   Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with the Jane’s group of   
   military publications. “It    
   also reflects a broader strategy based on terrorizing the resistance’s   
   civilian support base — which is to say, most of the population.”   
      
   Ye Zaw, a doctor, said on Thursday that all 22 victims at the monastery had   
   been tortured, some cut or burned with cigarettes.   
      
   Most were shot in the head at close range, said Dr. Ye Zaw, who examined the   
   bodies for the shadow National Unity Government, which considers itself   
   Myanmar’s legitimate government. Its human rights minister, Aung Myo Min,   
   said the victims were all    
   civilians and called the killings “a war crime committed by the military.”   
      
   The junta’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, said in a statement that   
   clashes began in the Nanneint area earlier this month, when “terrorists”   
   from outside the region took up positions and the military tried to drive them   
   out.   
      
   “Misinformation was disseminated that villagers were killed,” he said. The   
   general declined to take calls from The New York Times.   
      
   The conflict raging now is a far cry from the early resistance to the February   
   2021 coup. In those first months, protesters fought soldiers and the police   
   with slingshots and air guns made with plastic pipe.   
      
   After the demonstrations were crushed, many protesters left the cities and   
   allied themselves with armed ethnic groups that had battled the military for   
   decades. Together, the ethnic armies and the more recently formed Public   
   Defense Force now hold much    
   of the countryside, while the military controls the major urban areas.   
      
   Factories in two areas held by ethnic armies manufacture assault rifles and   
   grenade launchers, which have been spreading throughout the country, Mr. Davis   
   said. Other weapons, including M16s and M4s, are smuggled across the border   
   from Thailand.   
      
   Drawing on the expertise of engineers and tech experts who fled to rebel-held   
   territory, a cottage industry has sprung up to produce IEDs and adapt drones   
   to drop explosives on enemy targets, Mr. Davis said.   
      
   “What we have seen over the past year is a remarkable improvement in the   
   level of organization and weaponry now used by resistance forces,” he said.   
   “It is still David and Goliath, but David is looking increasingly cocky and   
   combative.”   
      
   The Tatmadaw, as the military is called, is perhaps most infamous for its   
   ruthless campaign against Rohingya Muslims in 2017, which killed at least   
   24,000 people and drove more than 700,000 across the border into Bangladesh,   
   where most still live in    
   squalid refugee camps.   
      
   During the protests against the coup in 2021, soldiers and the police gunned   
   down demonstrators and bystanders, including young children. Many were shot in   
   the head. Last October, military jets bombed a concert in Kachin State and   
   killed 80.   
      
   With the Tatmadaw facing an increasingly well-armed resistance, the regime   
   placed 40 townships under martial law in February, adding to the 10 that   
   already had been. The declaration sent troops the message that anything goes,   
   Mr. Davis said.   
      
   Since then, there has been a surge in military atrocities, including the   
   beheading, disembowelment or dismemberment of nearly two dozen rebels and   
   civilians this month in Sagaing Region.   
      
   “All these crimes are not mere human rights abuses,” Myanmar’s   
   ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, who was appointed before the   
   coup, said in a speech to the General Assembly in New York on Thursday.   
   “They are part of the military    
   junta’s systematic, widespread and coordinated attacks against the civilian   
   population.” He held up photos of the bodies at the Nanneint monastery.   
      
   But Mr. Davis said the resistance was now too big and well armed for the   
   Tatmadaw to bring it to heel with increased brutality.   
      
   “The military is a large and robust organization, but it is also severely   
   undermanned and overstretched, and obviously that creates vulnerabilities,”   
   he said. “It is hard to see politically or militarily what more they can   
   bring to the fight.”   
      
   Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar,   
   called for a coordinated international approach to the conflict, like the   
   coalition supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. “This is the   
   forgotten war,” he said in    
   an interview.   
      
   For soldiers to massacre monks and other civilians in a monastery is a sign of   
   how far the junta is willing to go in terrorizing the population, Mr. Andrews   
   said.   
      
   “They are losing ground and they understand they are losing ground,” he   
   said.   
      
      
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