Junta shells Chin state village killing 3 family members

A junta attack on a village in Myanmar’s northwestern Chin state killed a child and its parents, and also claimed the life of a former Chrisian pastor, locals told RFA.
Saturday’s artillery bombardment of Am Laung village in Mindat township also killed a soldier from the anti-junta Chinland Defense Force. The group identified him as Cpt. Salai Billi Aung Thang. It said he was a Christian pastor in Mindat before the military coup.
Villagers declined to give the names and ages of the dead family members for fear of reprisals.
A junta army convoy on the Mindat-Matupi road in Chin state on May 6, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist

The Chinland Defense Force said Infantry Battalion-274 shelled the village.
Locals said the junta cut phone lines and internet access in Mindat town ahead of the attack. 
They said Battalion-274 often shells villages, hoping to flush out militia members or punish residents for harboring them.
RFA called Chin state’s junta spokesman, Thant Zin, seeking comment on the incident, but no one answered.
Mindat was the first town to resist junta forces following the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, using traditional Chin hand-made hunting rifles. The same crude flintlock “Tumee” rifles were used by their forefathers to fight off British colonizers in the 1880s.
There have been more than 200 junta killings of ethnic Chin people since the coup, according to the list of Institute of Chin Affairs, a human rights organization based in Chin state.
In April 2022, the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) said more than 340,000 people had fled their homes in northwestern Myanmar, including Chin state, since the coup.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.


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