The village of Saung Nang Khae was seen burning on the northeastern shore of Pekhon Lake in southern Shan State on Monday after junta troops occupied a hill east of the community days earlier.
From across the lake—some three miles away—a local eyewitness said that he could see that “the whole village was on fire” at around 5pm.
“Smoke was coming out from all of Saung Nang Khae. We could even see the fire at night. The fires went out by the morning but smoke was still rising from the village,” the 25-year-old man, himself displaced from another nearby village, told Myanmar Now.
According to aerial photos of the village shared widely on social media, several fires were scattered across Saung Nang Khae, which originally had a total of 55 households and 345 residents.
On May 12, the anti-junta Pekhon People’s Defence Force (PDF) ambushed a Myanmar army base in Htiri village, Nyaungshwe Township, some eight miles from Saung Nang Khae. Some 15 soldiers were reportedly killed and five captured alive by the resistance.
The military responded with heavy artillery fire, and began carrying out raids throughout the area. Civilians from the surrounding communities, including Saung Nang Khae, were forced to flee the attacks, and had already left by the time their homes were destroyed.
“I’m sure that there is no one, apart from the military, remaining in the village,” said the man who witnessed the burning.
On Sunday, a clash between resistance forces and the military broke out near the village, with guerrilla fighters forced by an overnight airstrike to withdraw. One member of the Pekhon PDF was killed, according to an officer in the force’s second battalion.
He told Myanmar Now on Tuesday that, based on aerial photos taken of the area, the military was occupying the hill east of Saung Nang Khae, a position they had claimed one day prior to the torching of the village.
“They based themselves on that hill after bombings from the jets, so we still haven’t even been able to retrieve the dead body of our comrade,” the PDF officer said.
The military occupation of the hill forced residents of three other villages in the area—Lwepaw, Nang Paw Lon and Nang Sut—to also subsequently flee their homes.
“These three villages are located side by side. If one of them were to catch fire, the others would burn as well since they are all connected,” the 25-year-old eyewitness, who is from Nang Sut, explained.
While locals and the Pekhon PDF officer said the destruction of Saung Nang Khae was perpetrated by the occupying junta troops, military-controlled newspapers claimed on Tuesday that resistance fighters who arrived by boat from the western shores of Pekhon Lake were responsible for the arson.
“It’s not uncommon for the military to torch villages. They have already done this in Sagaing Region and in Demoso and Moebye,” the PDF officer said, referring to two neighbouring townships in Karenni and Shan states, respectively. “They’re doing this everywhere. It’s ridiculous that they decided to blame us for this.”
A 62-year-old farmer was among those in Saung Nang Khae who were forced to flee, taking his family to Loikaw, the capital of neighbouring Karenni (Kayah) State. They were not able to bring any of their possessions, he said.
“Not only did we have to run, our house was also destroyed in the fire,” he told Myanmar Now, explaining that he had built the two-storey home in 2020, and also lost his family’s rice stores.
He noted that this was the time of year in which he would normally be planting rice in order to ensure the family’s food security and income.
“I don’t know how we are going to afford food and shelter in the coming year. The children are constantly crying and I don’t know what to do anymore as we’ve never faced something like this,” he said.
In total, residents of some 20 villages in Pekhon Township have been displaced by military raids and occupation in the aftermath of the February 2021 coup.
The Karenni Civil Society Network reported earlier this month that more than 600 homes had been destroyed during this same period by the military in Karenni State, located across the border from the southern Shan State townships of Pekhon and Moebye, which also have a large ethnic Karenni population.
