A group of soldiers confessed to murdering five civilians in northern Myanmar at a court martial on Tuesday, in a rare example of openness from Myanmar’s secretive military.
Speaking at the North Eastern Command headquarters in Lashio, northern Shan state, four officers said they had given the orders, while three lower-ranking soldiers admitted to stabbing the men to death, the Irrawaddy reports.
The officers, named as Colonel Nyo Aung, Majors Tin Myo Zaw and Aung Nay Myo and Military Intelligence Captain Lin Naing Soe pleaded guilty to the crime, alleged to have occurred in Mong Yaw village in late June.
One of the soldiers, Sergeant Sein Win Maung, reportedly said he should be found not guilty because he had been under orders.
Families of the victims attended the hearing, but were told not to speak.
The case has elicited an unprecedented response from Myanmar’s military, which rarely confesses culpability in the deaths of civilians and usually holds military tribunals behind closed doors.
Lt-Gen Mya Tun Oo made the unprecedented step of admitting the army’s guilt at a press conference on July 20.
The army was quickly implicated in the deaths after the bodies of the five men were found, as soldiers from the military’s Light Infantry Battalion 362 had been spotted taking villagers for questioning on June 25.
Locals have also accused the military, which was stationed in the area following reports of recruitment by an armed ethnic group, of gunning down two men riding motorbikes the same day. The army insists the men were killed in crossfire during fighting with a rebel group.
