SAC Escalates Collective Punishment across the Danu Heartlands

1. Summary

This report documents the escalation of human rights violations by State Administration Council (SAC) troops, police and local Pyusawhti militia against local villagers in Ywangan and adjoining townships of Southern Shan State and Mandalay since mid-2022. This escalation of collective punishment is clearly in direct response to the expanding influence of Danu and PDF resistance forces in these areas.

SHRF’s May 2022 update documented extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrest, looting and arson by SAC troops in five villages in Ywangan since the February 2021 coup. This latest report exposes how SAC troops have escalated these violations since May 2022 over a much wider area, including fourteen villages in Ywangan, as well as in Tharzi township of Mandalay.

The scale of arson in particular has sharply escalated in recent months. Previously, only individual houses of those suspected of resistance links had been torched, but on December 22, 2024, the entire village of Minpalaung in southwest Ywangan, totaling 170 houses, was burned down by SAC LID 55 troops as collective punishment for attacks by Danu resistance forces.

Since December 2024, the SAC has also started using airstrikes and heavy artillery against Danu resistance forces. SAC air and artillery strikes in Kyaukku, northern Lawksawk township, between December 18 and January 16, killed three villagers and injured 14, while an airstrike in Ywangan on January 31 damaged several houses.

The report also highlights the ongoing use of sexual violence by SAC troops, including gang-rape of three women by six LID 55 soldiers in May 2023, and sexual torture of a 23-year-old woman detained in Ywangan, who was later sentenced to 12 years in prison on anti-terrorism charges.

As a result of the escalating SAC abuses, especially arson attacks, there are now over 1,000 IDPs sheltering in the forested hills of Ywangan. Some have had to flee several times due to SAC operations. Despite facing severe hardship, these IDPs have received almost no humanitarian aid.

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