Defector: 'Than Shwe ordered massacre'

[Above is a photo-composite showing Burma's Senior General Than Shwe with ladies' underwear on his head (thanks to Burma Digest).

Below is a serious news story about the kind of thing he has done in his time. You can read it in the newspaper here.]

The leader of the Burmese junta, Than Shwe, personally ordered the murder of scores of unarmed villagers and Thai fishermen, according to a senior diplomat and military intelligence officer who defected to the United States.

Aung Lin Htut, formerly the deputy chief of mission at the Burmese embassy in Washington, described to a radio station how 81 people, including women and children, were shot dead and buried on an isolated island after straying into a remote military zone in the south-east of the country in 1998.

After one general hesitated to kill the civilians, fearing that the commander who had given the order was drunk at the time, he was informed that it came from “Aba Gyi” or “Great Father” – the term used to refer to Senior General Than Shwe, the head of the junta.

A few days later, troops from the same military base captured a Thai fishing boat which had strayed lose to Christie Island in the Mergui Archipelago. The 22 fishermen on boat were also shot and buried on the island. “I was a witness to the two incidents which happened consecutively in which a total of about 81 people were killed,” Mr Aung Lin Htut, formerly a major in military intelligence told the Burmese language service of Voice of America. “All of them were unarmed civilians.”

In 46 years of military rule in Burma, there have been numerous reports of grave human rights violations including the massacre of civilians, but few have been attested by so well placed a source as Major Aung Lin Htut. They come at a time when General Than Shwe and his regime are coming under intense scrutiny, after their refusal to allow a full scale relief operation for the victims of Cyclone Nargis.

The French government has said that it comes close to being a “crime against humanity”, and last week the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, called it “”criminal neglect.” If a tribunal like the ones established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia is ever created for Burma, then Maj. Aung Lin Htut will doubtless be called to give evidence.

He sought political asylum from the US in 2005 along with six members of his family, after a purge against the country’s then prime minister and intelligence chief by General Than Shwe destroyed the careers of a generation of intelligence officers. Given the strict control of information in Burma, his account is impossible to verify independently. But it draws credibility from the fact that it is the first time since his defection that Maj Aung Lin Htut has made any public comment on his former masters.

In May 1998, he was stationed on Zadetkyi island, a frontline base close to Burma’s maritime border with Thailand. The commander of the base was Colonel Zaw Min, who is now minister for electric power and general secretary of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the junta’s grass roots organisation. A unit led by the colonel landed on Christie Island and found 59 people living there to gather wood and bamboo, in violation of Burmese law. The order came back from headquarters that they were to be “eliminated”.

Myint Swe, an air force general, said he was a religious person, that the matter should be handled delicately, and that he was concerned by the timing of the order – just after lunch, a time when General Maung Aye, now the number two in the junta, was usually drunk.

“[But] the order was not from ‘Aba Aye’ [Father Aye] but from ‘Aba Gyi’ [Great Father],” Maj Aung Lin Htut said in the radio interview last week.  “Senior General Than Shwe is [the one] whom we referred to as ‘Aba Gyi’ in the military.”

He added that such orders were common, especially in border areas of Thailand where the military is fighting long running insurgencies by ethnic minority armies.  “An order was officially given to ‘eliminate all, do not even leave behind . . . foetuses in the womb or pregnant women.  … That was an official order and it was a verbal order given to us at a conference on military operations.  Orders like that would not be put down in writing.”

Comments

[Andrew Milner]

Hope you're keeping in regular touch with base, because as far as us mug-punters are concerned, you've dropped off the edge of the map. Watch out for them f***ing Chinese bandits on the Lao/China border. Cut your throat behind your back for a few bucks and a Rolex. If you get the chance to waste a few (100 bucks a head should cover it), see it as your good deed for the day.