Junta forces detained four people from a village in Mandalay Region in an early morning raid on Tuesday, including three women who were taken because their relatives avoided capture.
Troops and police officers travelling in a convoy of seven vehicles arrived in Thapyay Thar, which is in Myingyan Township, at around 5am in search of a group of men, apparently acting on a tip from an informant.
When they tried to enter the home of 50-year-old Mya Shin to arrest her son, she stood in their way to give him time to escape and was then beaten and detained, a witness said.
“She was covering her son from the front and they started yelling ‘move aside, old lady, you’re too old, stop interrupting us,’ and they beat her with a branch,” the witness said. “She was beaten three or four times right in front of me. They decided to take their anger out on her for not being able to catch up with her son who ran away.”
A woman named Daw Mone, who is 60, was also detained along with her 30-year-old daughter Hnin Moe after police and soldiers were unable to find Daw Mone’s husband, Kyaw Myint.
A 60-year-old man named U Mhat was also taken away that morning, the witness and another local said.
They added that they believed the military had been given false information about the men they came to the village to arrest.
Myanmar Now was unable to contact the families of those arrested.
Three months ago a local administrator appointed by the junta was killed in Thapyay Thar, but no one from the 225-household village was arrested at the time, the sources said.
It is a common tactic of the junta to detain the family members, including young children, of activists and others who have evaded capture.
