Bound, gagged, shot: Myanmar’s military massacre women, children, charity workers as activists call for arms embargo against junta

35 charred bodies found in Kayah State last month were killed in the ‘most inhumane manner I have seen in my life’, said a doctor who conducted the autopsies

Aid agencies lament world powers’ ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach, including the US and China, to reports of grisly mass killings and other atrocities

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Smoke and flames billow from vehicles in Hpruso on December 24. Myanmar government troops rounded up and shot more than 30 villagers and set their bodies on fire, witnesses said. Photo: Karenni Nationalities Defence Force via AP

Published: 1:00pm, 9 Jan 2022Updated: 1:12pm, 9 Jan 2022

In 2021 there were a raft of reports about the Myanmar military regime’s mass killings, and the massacre in Hpruso, Kayah state, on Christmas Eve ranks as one of the deadliest attacks of the year.

Anti-junta fighters, rights activists and officials from international aid agencies who spoke to This Week in Asia said that while news of large civilian casualties no longer jolted them after months of fighting, the nature of the latest killings had horrified them.

On Christmas Day, the Myanmar Now news portal reported that the remains of at least 35 charred bodies had been found in three burnt-out vehicles. This week, a doctor who conducted autopsies on the bodies told a press conference that the condition of the remains showed the victims were killed “in the cruellest and most inhumane manner I have seen in my life”.

Smouldering vehicles in Hpruso, Myanmar, where women and children were shot and set on fire. Photo: AP

Among the victims were women, children and two employees of the charity Save the Children. The doctor said several of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs, were gagged, and had holes in their lungs and chests. The group of doctors who conducted the postmortem examinations were able to carry out autopsies on only 31 bodies as other remains had been completely destroyed by the fire and crumbled to ashes when touched.

The Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known locally, said after the incident that people were “killed in the crossfire”, adding that “gunmen” fired back at soldiers when the convoy of vehicles was asked to stop for checks. Interviewees suggested that without stepped-up international action including an arms embargo endorsed by the United Nations, such killings were likely to intensify in the coming months.

Since junta chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power and detained leaders of the democratically elected National League for Democracy last February, more than 1,400 people have been killed by security forces, according to local monitoring group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

A senior official from an international aid agency directly involved in Myanmar operations lamented what he referred to as an “out of sight, out of mind” policy on the latest killings by world powers including the US and China, and suggested that national governments’ public condemnations of the violence was “out of step from their positions on what is a civil war in all but name”.