Hell in 2021: Myanmar Under the Military Junta After the Coup
The military junta killed at least 657 people exercising their right to peaceful protest against it
between 1 February and 31 December. The toll of people tortured to death in interrogation centres
across the country within 11 months has raised to 103 according to figures published by Radio Free
Asia (RFA).15
The More Brutal the Junta Is, The More Momentous the Revolution Gets
The military junta cannot expand its control into the entire country in the face of people’s
protests, established armed resistance groups, and dissents even though Min Aung Hlaing led a coup
d'état, seizing power with arms on 1 February. The junta’s security forces rammed a military truck into
a peaceful protest in Panbingyi ward, Kyimyindaing township in Yangon on 5 December, with footages
going viral on social media and sparked outrage amid people, leading them to pay more attention to the
revolution. A youth was quoted by Myanmar Now as saying, “Protester marched from Panbingyi street
into the road. A double-cab being driven at 80 mph or 90 mph advanced and rammed into the protest
when they walked about 20 steps. People were hit and scattered to 20 or 30 feet away. All were hit and
scattered. No one could stand up”.16
At least three people were severely injured with 10 arrested in that case which provoked strong
indignation from the people again due to the military’s terrorist-style violence against peaceful
protesters17 and pots-and-pans protests of expelling the dictator resumed in many places in Yangon on
the same day.
On 31 July, 11 villagers from Khotwin, Thayettaw, and Nyaungthu village in Kani town,
Sagaing Region were reportedly burnt alive with two motorbikes.18 Besides, the regime troops opened
artillery fires about ten times on the Chin State’s Thantlang township and burned down 164 buildings
including churches, banks, and the majority of homes after a soldier had been killed on 19 October.19
The township suffered a gigantic arson attack again on 24 November, resulting in the destruction of 50
homes and for the third time on 4 December, ending with 19 buildings including churches.20 According
to the local organizations, Thantlang township experienced arson attacks more than ten times since the
middle of September and five churches and more than 490 homes were destroyed. Moreover, the junta
troops staged an inhumane massacre of 11 day-wage hired workers, burning them alive with their hands
tied behind their back in Don Taw village in Sagaing Region’s Salingyi town, home to 300 households,
15
January 7, 2022. အာဏာသိမ်း2ပီး ၁၁ လအတွငး် စစ်ေGကာေရးမHာ ေသဆံး( သJ ၁၀၃ ဦးSHိ. Radio Free Asia.
Available at https://www.rfa.org/burmese/program_2/eleven-months-coup-103-people-killed-ininterrogations-01072022025624.html
16
December 6, 2021. စစ်ေကာင်စ၏
ီ ရက်စက်Gကမ်းGကUတ်မI သက်ေသ၊ ပန်းပင်Nကီးလမ်းြဖစ်စဥ်. Myanmar Now.
Available at https://www.myanmar-now.org/mm/news/9560
17
Ibid.
18
August 18, 2021. “ကနီေဒသတဝိက
( အ
် စ(လက
ိ( အ
် ြပံUလိက
( ် သတ်ြဖတ်ခရ
ံ မIများ”. Available at
https://aappb.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Burmese-Final-Edition-.pdf
19
Nyein Swe andLin Htin. October 30, 2021. စစ်တပ်^Iိ OမီးေGကာင့် ထန်တလန်မH အိမ် ၁၆၀ ေကျာ် မီးေလာင်ဟ( CDF
ေြပာ. Myanmar Now. Available at https://www.myanmar-now.org/mm/news/9037
20
Nyeing Swe and Lin Htin. November 25, 2021. ထန်တလန်တင
ွ ် ေနအိမ် ၅၀ခန် ထပ်
မံမီး^I ိ Oခရ
ံ . Myanmar Now.
့
Available at https://www.myanmar-now.org/mm/news/9445
7