With their feet trapped in wooden stocks, the two young guys are covered in blood.Their captors cry, “What is the PDF (People’s Defence Force)?” “Dogs,” they answer.The soldiers are hogtied and dragged across the uneven terrain by their heavy chains, humiliated and dehumanised. They are strung up on a tree with a fire kindled beneath them, all in front of scores of bystanders.The two guys struggle and scream in anguish as smoke rises and the flames devour them; their last moments of unspeakable horror and agony are documented on camera.
While Thar Htaung was only 20 years old, Phoe Tay was 21.The two young men had left their family farms in northwest Myanmar to join a local armed resistance group following the 2021 military coup, hoping to bring peace and democracy to the Southeast Asian country, their fathers told CNN.But they were captured during a battle against the military on November 7 last year, and taken to a nearby village, where they were tortured and killed by a pro-junta militia under the watch of Myanmar army soldiers, according to witnesses.
CNN has built a timeline of events, using accounts from more than a dozen witnesses, villagers, resistance fighters, family members and analysts, with analysis of the video and pictures from the day using open source techniques. Those accounts and analysis point to the ruling military as being responsible for the killings, in contradiction of their public denials.
Phoe Tay and Thar Htaung’s deaths are horrific, but they are not anomalies in Myanmar, where the military is waging a war of terror against civilians as it finds itself increasingly on the back foot against a nationwide armed resistance determined to oust it from power.Those attacks have only increased since a rebel offensive launched five months ago resulted in major losses and defections for the military, multiple sources confirmed.
By waging terror tactics including burnings, beheadings, mutilations, torching villages, and through a massive aerial bombing campaign that has displaced nearly three million people, the Myanmar military is attempting to control and divide the population through a long-established doctrine of fear and brutality, witnesses and analysts say.Army chief Min Aung Hlaing’s coup on February 1, 2021 deposed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, replacing it with a ruling military junta and plunging the country into a state of instability and violence. Suu Kyi, who was state counselor, is now serving a 27-year sentence following secretive trials.
Widespread public opposition to the military’s forcible takeover and bloody crackdown on protesters has only grown in the past three years and a nationwide armed resistance movement, which includes many of the country’s powerful ethnic rebel armies, now poses a legitimate threat to the junta.Nestled between the Chin Hills to the west and central Myanmar’s Dry Zone to the east is the Yaw Valley.
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