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Forced guard duty leads to suicide attempt
Wed 01 Nov 2006,
IMNA
Nai Htaw Mung (35) of Toa Tate village in southern Ye Township, Mon State tried to kill himself on October 25 because the military authorities ordered him to do guard duty in the village regularly.
When people came to see him after he consumed poison, he said "I cannot work and I have to do guard duty almost everyday. I have no property to fall back on for my family so I was disappointed that's why I wanted to die."
Since the infamous Lt Col Myo Min, took charge of Infantry Battalion (IB) No.31 based in southern Ye Township, the villagers have been facing a terrible situation.
The villagers are being severely tortured and raped by the military. Recently Nai Tun Oo and Nai Yought, from Yin-ye village sub Kaw-zar Township, southern Mon State were brutally tortured by IB No-31 because they did not see Mon rebel groups entering the village to collect rice from the villagers during guard duty.
According to a relative neither of them can work suffering as they are from pain in the bones.
The southern Ye Township area is identified as a ‘black area’ by the junta because it is unable to control it and it is home to many insurgent groups fighting with the junta since the New Mon State Party (NMSP) had a ceasefire agreement with the junta in 1995.
These areas often witness fighting between the junta’s troops and rebel armed groups. The junta uses local people to guard the villages on a rotational basis of 12 people per night in some villages where insurgents enter, said local residents.
"If the village is small, the rate of rotation for guarding the village differs. In some small villages the rate of rotation is two days and in some it is four days," said a local villager.
To cut off food supply for insurgent groups, the IB No.31 ordered villagers not to take food when they go to the farms and not to sell what the insurgents would like to buy from the village. Two girls were arrested last week for selling things to insurgents in Kaw-zar town.
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