The Myanmar junta arrested prominent crony Khin Shwe and his son Zay Thiha on Monday after they were accused of demolishing historic buildings on rented land owned by Myanmar’s defence ministry, according to a family friend and leaked police records.
At a press conference in Naypyitaw on Thursday, military spokesperson Maj-Gen Zaw Min Tun confirmed the arrest of the two men.
Employees of an antiques museum owned by the 71-year-old tycoon’s family were also taken for questioning by military authorities on Monday, but were later released. It is not known how many employees were taken into junta custody or the line of questioning posed to them.
Leaked police records seen by Myanmar Now show that charges were filed on February 11 against both Khin Shwe and Zay Thiha at the Bahan Township police station by Lt-Col Aung Kyaw Moe of the Yangon Region Military Command and that they were in detention at the time of reporting.
The chair of the construction firm Zaykabar Company Ltd. and his son are accused of violating Section 24 of Myanmar’s 2015 law on the “protection and preservation of ancient monuments,” which is meant to safeguard buildings deemed important to national heritage. A member of the junta police in Yangon confirmed the charges to Myanmar Now.
If convicted, the charge carries a prison term of five to 10 years.
The source close to Khin Shwe’s family said that the arrest stemmed from outstanding rental fees for military-owned land, and the unauthorised demolition of buildings on that property.
The case outlined in the police documents centres on a contract signed by the Zaykabar chair in 2014 for a long-term leasehold on approximately 13 acres of military-owned land on Pale Road in Bahan Township, on which the company had intended to construct hotels and serviced apartments. However, the military shut down the project in 2018 after it was decided that the developer had breached the initial memorandum of understanding with the defence ministry.
The Zaykabar Company had reportedly agreed to a more than US$41m premium for use of the property and $1.2m annually in rental fees, upon being granted approval from relevant departments and ministries.
Each of five installments amounting to 20 percent of the premium—around $8.3m—would be paid by Zaykabar to the military before any business could be launched on the land. The company reportedly paid the first two installments in 2014, or more than $16m, but failed to pay the remaining three. Police records stated that the company was notified of the delinquency by letters sent on eight occasions.
Leaked documents also accuse Zaykabar of collaborating with a foreign company named Human Land Oversea Real Estate Development to demolish four buildings on the property reportedly considered to be important to Myanmar’s historic and cultural heritage, including an old mayor’s residence.
Family members of the detainees have not answered Myanmar Now’s calls.
It is not known why the military only recently decided to press charges in the case.
Khin Shwe was considered to be a military ally and was a parliamentarian representing Yangon’s Constituency 9 for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party from 2010 until 2015, when he did not win reelection.
His daughter is married to Shwe Mann, former Lower House speaker and once the chair of the USDP, as well as the current chair of the Union Betterment Party. He later grew close to State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who was subsequently ousted in last year’s military coup against her National League for Democracy Government. He has stayed out of the public eye since that time.
Junta hostages found tortured, executed in Sagaing
The bodies of 17 people, including a resistance fighter who was dismembered and disemboweled, are found after a village raid by a junta column under LID 99
A butchered body
From the house where he was being held, Kan Kaung could easily hear the screams and cries coming from the monastery on the opposite side of the village. But he also saw some of those who would later be killed, including a woman in her late 30s or early 40s and an elderly man who were both brought into the house. The woman had her hands tied behind her back and had been accused of having a gun in her house.
The entire village was filled with the sound of soldiers shouting threats at those they had captured, but no shots were fired for the first three hours after the raid began. Then a shootout with local resistance forces started. This clash lasted about half an hour and included the eight soldiers who were guarding the house. Kan Kaung remained perfectly still the whole time, mindful of the soldiers’ threat to kill him if he tried to escape.
After the fighting stopped, another soldier entered the house and showed a photo of a man with multiple gunshot wounds to the two Tar Taing villagers, demanding to know if the man was Kyaw Zaw. After looking at the soldier’s phone, the villagers confirmed that the victim was, in fact, Kyaw Zaw. After receiving the answer he wanted, the soldier went to get a meat cleaver and left the house again.
When he returned about half an hour later, the soldier no longer had the cleaver. But he had a new photo on his phone that he insisted on pushing into the faces of the two captured villagers.
“He showed his phone to the villagers and told them that this is what happened to Kyaw Zaw. He also told them to take notes,” Kan Kaung told Myanmar Now.
The soldier asked Kan Kaung if he wanted to see the photo, too, but he said he didn’t dare look at it. The photo, as he later learned, showed Kyaw Zaw’s body, not just dead, but also decapitated, dismembered and eviscerated.
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Murder in the monastery
U Moe, a Tar Taing resident in his 60s, was among the 100 or so villagers who were held in the village’s monastery throughout the nearly 24-hour ordeal. Soon after he was captured, he and around 10 other elderly villagers were taken to the monastery’s main building, while some others who had their hands tied behind their backs were forced to lie face down on the ground in the monastery compound.
“The soldiers called themselves the ‘Ogre Column.’ They said they weren’t going to torch the village, but were just looking for PDFs,” he said, referring to members of the anti-regime People’s Defence Force.
According to U Moe, the soldiers had a list of names on their phones that they used to separate the villagers into different groups. Around 80 people who were not on the list filled the building that he was in, which housed the monastery’s altar and Buddha images. This group was further divided by gender, with the men staying upstairs and the women downstairs, he said.
The ones lying on the ground outside were all people whose names were on the list. They were also joined by a few villagers accused of trying to escape or of talking back to the soldiers.
The soldiers called themselves the ‘Ogre Column.’ They said they weren’t going to torch the village, but were just looking for PDFs
Although the windows and doors of the monastery’s main building were all closed, U Moe said he could clearly hear what was happening outside. The soldiers were beating the captives they had tied up, who were crying out in agony. Occasionally, this sound would be punctuated by that of a gunshot.
This continued until around 5pm, he said. That was when some of the soldiers came back into the building to get a few of the women, who were told to start cooking dinner for them and the other prisoners. (On the other side of the village, Kan Kaung said he saw soldiers catching chickens for the women to cook. They also stole dried beef from the villagers’ homes, he added.)
After eating, the soldiers settled in for the night. A few were assigned to guard duty, occasionally firing their guns out into the darkness whenever the resistance sources shot at them to remind them that they were still there.
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A trail of bodies
The next morning, the Ogre Column set off in the direction of Nyaung Yin, a village about 4km west of Tar Taing. The column was divided into four groups this time, each one accompanied by a number of hostages. The first group left at around 7am, but the third group, which included Kan Kaung and his friends and five other men, didn’t leave until 8am.
Before reaching Nyaung Yin, Kan Kaung and his friends were separated from the other five, who stayed behind with five soldiers. As he was being led away, Kan Kaung said he heard at least eight gunshots being fired behind him.
“We were scared out of our minds, even though they said they weren’t going to kill us. I asked one of the soldiers what was going to happen to us, and he said that only those who had been tied up would be killed,” Kan Kaung told Myanmar Now.
Later he saw the bodies of other victims—villagers who had gone ahead of them with the first and second groups.
“There were five bodies in one place, and three more somewhere else. Some were on their stomachs, some on their backs. Some had been shot in the head from the behind while kneeling down,” he said.
When they reached Nyaung Yin, they found that its inhabitants had already fled. The soldiers they were with took over the first abandoned house they approached on the eastern edge of the village. And it was at this point that Kan Kaung and his friends were finally released with a final warning: Don’t try anything.
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‘I can’t even describe it’
Others who saw the bodies claimed that the victims were not merely murdered, but also tortured and sexually assaulted.
“They were beaten so badly before they were killed that their skulls had caved in. It was so hard to look at. The female victims also appeared to have been sexually assaulted before they were killed,” said a local who was part of the group that retrieved the bodies on March 2.
Ko Kyaw, a member of a local defence team who also helped to collect the bodies, said the underwear of the female victims had been torn and that onions had been forced into their vaginas. Myanmar Now was unable to verify this information.
Despite the brutal treatment they were subjected to, it appeared that almost none of those who had been killed were members of the armed resistance. Most were farmers or fishermen, and a few were from other villages. One, a 35-year-old resident of the neighbouring village of Shwe Hlay named Chit Kaung, was allegedly captured near Tar Taing while trying to find a missing cow.
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Many of the victims were related. Ko Thein, a 25-year-old Tar Taing native, lost his mother, brother, brother-in-law and aunt that day. He survived only because he was not in Tar Taing when the soldiers arrived.
“They killed my family members in such an unimaginable way. I can’t even describe it,” he said.
Two more bodies were later discovered north and south of Tar Taing. One, belonging to a 25-year-old man named Yarhu, was found south of the village on the bank of the Ayeyarwady River. Like Kyaw Zaw, the only confirmed member of the resistance among all the victims, Yarhu’s body was decapitated and dismembered.
“It looked like they put his neck on some kind of chopping block,” said one local who saw the body.
Terrorist actions
The self-described Ogre Column was, in fact, a group of nearly 70 soldiers that had been transported to the village of Ma Lal Thar in Ayadaw Township, some 50km north of Tar Taing, on February 24.
The same column also raided at least 10 villages in Myinmu and Sagaing townships. A total of 23 locals were killed in just one week and seven of them, including five in the village of Pa Dat Taing and two in Tar Taing, were decapitated and dismembered.
Moe Gyo, the leader of the Sagaing-based Sartaung Moe Gyo People’s Defence Team, encountered the Ogre Column in Kandaw, a village in Myinmu Township. Those same soldiers beheaded two members of his group after capturing them.
“They are taunting us and trying to instil fear in us. That is exactly why we can’t forgive them,” he said.
On March 6, the publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG) held a press conference highlighting the Tar Taing massacre. Aung Myo Min, the NUG’s human rights minister, said that junta forces have committed at least 32 massacres over the past two years.
“We have proved multiple times how cruel the military is,” he said, addressing the international community. “I have urged you before and I am urging you again. Please stop the military council’s terrorist actions as soon as possible.”
Beheaded bodies of PDF members found in southern Sagaing Region
Resistance forces claim the military captured and executed three of the fighters, while the other two were killed in combat