Myanmar villagers say army beheaded high school teacher

The decapitated body of a teacher was left on grotesque display after a high school in central Myanmar was detained and killed by the military, witnesses said.

The incident marks the latest of many abuses by the military trying to crack down on Myanmar’s opposition to military rule.

The headless body of Saw Tun Moe, 46, was left on the ground in front of the school’s spiked gate, with his head pierced through it, according to eyewitness accounts and photos taken in Taung Myint village in the rural area of ​​Magway.

Schools, which had been closed since last year, were also burned.

Neither the military junta nor the state-controlled media has released information about the teacher’s death.

Myanmar’s military has arrested tens of thousands of people and blamed more than 2,300 civilians since taking power last year when it seized the government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted: “We are appalled by reports of the arrest, public dismemberment and beheading of a teacher by the Myanmar military junta in the Magway region.

“The regime’s brutal violence, including against educators, requires a strong international response.”

The United States officially refers to Myanmar by its old name, Burma, which was changed by the former military junta.

In September, at least seven young students were killed in a helicopter attack on a school at a Buddhist monastery in the Sagaing region of north-central Myanmar.

The military junta has denied responsibility for the attack.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said in June that the United Nations had recorded 260 attacks on schools and education personnel since the military took over.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military took power in February 2021, with peaceful protests and civil disobedience across the country being crushed with deadly force by security forces.

The crackdown led to widespread armed resistance that has since morphed into what UN experts say is a civil war.

The army has carried out major offensives in the countryside, including burning villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, leaving them with little or no access to humanitarian aid.

Myanmar’s military has long been accused of gross human rights abuses, especially in the western state of Rakhine.

The International Court of Justice is considering whether it committed genocide in a brutal 2017 counter-insurgency campaign that saw more than 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority flee to neighboring Bangladesh for safety.

The slain teacher, Saw Tun Moe, was a longtime educator who had participated in anti-military protests and was later in charge of a high school in his home village of Thit Nyi Naung, founded by the country’s pro-democracy movement.

The National Unity Government (NUG), an underground group that opposes military rule and calls itself the country’s legitimate executive, opened a network of schools in parts of the country this year as a temporary education system in parts of the country that it believes are armed militias loyal to it Strong enough to protect yourself.

Saw Tun Moe also teaches mathematics at his village school and another nearby alternative school, and is involved in the management of Thit Nyi Naung, where he lives with his family.

He previously taught for 20 years at a private school in Magway (also known as Magwe).

NUG’s education department mourned his death in a statement late Thursday. Praise him and the other fallen teachers as “heroes of the revolution.” The group also expressed solidarity with teachers and students who continued to resist the army.

The teacher’s death came as some 90 government soldiers raided at least a dozen district villages this month.

About 20 villagers, including Saw Tun Moe, were hiding behind a hut in a peanut field at 9.30am local time (4am BST) on Sunday, a villager told the AP A soldier arrived with armed civilians and fired into the air.Ton

The military armed and hired civilian auxiliaries who acted as guides and participated in raids.

Villagers said they were caught by the army, who confiscated their mobile phones and other belongings and separated the three men from the group on the orders of an officer, but only took Saw Tun Moe.

“We all kept our heads down and didn’t dare to look. Then, one of the soldiers shouted to him: ‘Come on. Fatty come, follow us,” and took him away. The soldiers were lenient with him, so we didn’t think that would happen,” said the villager.

She said Saw Tun Moe was taken to Taung Myint village, nearly a mile north of Thit Nyi Naung, where he was killed the next day.

“I learned on Monday morning that he was killed. It is very sad to lose a good teacher who we depended on to educate our children,” added the villager. She said her children had studied at his school.

A villager from Taung Myint village said he saw Saw Tun Moe’s body around 11am local time (5.30BST) on Monday after the soldiers left.

“First, I called my friend, then I looked at the body more closely. I knew right away that it was Teacher Mo. He had been visiting our village as a teacher for the past few months, so I recognized him face,” said the villager.

Photos taken by his friend showed the teacher’s body and head. An old campaign poster with a picture of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was draped over the body’s thigh.

According to villagers, the severed fingers from his right hand were placed between his thighs. The three-finger salute, a gesture used by the country’s civil disobedience movement, was inspired by the Hunger Games series.

On the exterior of the school, which was partially burned by soldiers on Sunday, scrawled graffiti carried the ominous warning: “I’ll be back, you run away (expletive).”