Myanmar villagers say army beheaded high school teacher

The decapitated body of a high school teacher was left on grotesque display at a school in central Myanmar after he was detained and killed the military, witnesses said on Thursday, marking the latest of many abuses alleged as the army tries to crush opposition to military rule.
According to witnesses’ descriptions and photos taken in Taung Myint village in the rural Magway region, the headless body of 46-year-old Saw Tun Moe was left on the ground in front of the school’s spiked gate and his head was impaled on top of it. The school, which has been closed since last year, was also burned.
Neither the military government nor the state-controlled media have released information about the teacher’s death.

Myanmar’s military has arrested tens of thousands of people and been blamed for the deaths of more than 2,300 civilians since seizing power last year from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
“We are appalled reports that Burma’s military regime arrested, publicly mutilated, and beheaded a schoolteacher in Magway Region,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Twitter.
“The regime’s brutal violence, including against educators, demands a strong response from the international community.” The United States officially refers to Myanmar its old name, Burma, which was changed a previous military government.
Smoke rises from debris and corrugated roofing of a school structure that was burned to the ground in Taung Myint village in the Magway region of Myanmar on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022. (AP)
In September, at least seven young students were killed in a helicopter attack on a school in a Buddh monastery in the Sagaing region in north-central Myanmar.
The military government denied responsibility for the attacks. The UN has documented 260 attacks on schools and education personnel since the army takeover, the UN Child Rights Committee said in June.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military’s February 2021 seizure of power was met nationwide peaceful protests and civil disobedience that security forces suppressed with deadly force. The repression led to widespread armed resance, which has since turned into what UN experts have characterized as a civil war.

The army has conducted major offensives in the countryside, including burning down villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, allowing them little or no access to humanitarian assance.
Myanmar’s military has long been accused of serious human rights violations, most notably in the western state of Rakhine. International courts are considering whether it committed genocide there in a brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign that caused more than 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh for safety.
The slain teacher, Saw Tun Moe, was a longtime educator who had participated in anti-military protests before taking charge of a high school founded the country’s pro-democracy movement in his native Thit Nyi Naung village.
The National Unity Government, an underground organisation opposed to military rule that styles itself as the country’s legitimate adminrative body, opened a network of schools this year as an interim education system in parts of the country where it believed armed militias loyal to it were strong enough to defend themselves.

Saw Tun Moe also taught mathematics at his village school and another near alternative school and was involved in the adminration of Thit Nyi Naung, where he lived with his family. He previously taught at a private school in Magway, also known as Magwe, for 20 years.
The NUG’s education arm mourned his death in a statement late Thursday that praised him and other fallen teachers as “revolutionary heroes” and expressed solidarity with the teachers and students who continue their resance to the military.
His death occurred as a column of about 90 government soldiers carried out sweeps of at least a dozen area villages this month.
A villager told news agency The Associated Press phone that she was among about two dozen villagers including Saw Tun Moe who were hiding behind a hut in a peanut field at 9:30 am on Sunday when a group of more than 80 soldiers accompanied armed civilians arrived, shooting their guns into the air. The military arms and employs civilian auxiliaries who serve as guides and take part in raids.
The villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared being punished the authorities, said they were caught the troops, who seized their phones and other belongings and at an officer’s command separated three men from the group, but took away only Saw Tun Moe.
“Our heads were bowed at that time and we didn’t dare to look at them. Later, one of the soldiers called to him, “Come. Come fatty, follow us,” and took him away. The soldiers treated him leniently, so we didn’t think this would happen,” the villager said.

She said Saw Tun Moe was taken to Taung Myint village, more than a kilometer (almost a mile) north of Thit Nyi Naung, and killed him there the following day.
“I learned on Monday morning that he had been killed. It is very sad to lose a good teacher who we depended on for our children’s education,” the villager added. She said her two children studied at his school.
A villager from Taung Myint village said he saw Saw Tun Moe’s body at about 11 am Monday after the soldiers had left.
“First, I called my friends, then I looked at the body more closely. I immediately knew that it was Teacher Moe. He used to visit our village as a schoolteacher in the past few months, so I recognized his face,” said the villager from Taung Myint, who also asked not to be named for his own safety.
Photos taken his friend showed the teacher’s body and head. An old campaign poster with Suu Kyi’s photos covered the corpse’s thigh. Fingers severed from his right hand had been placed between his thighs, according to the villagers. A three-finger salute is a gesture adopted the country’s civil disobedience movement, inspired “The Hunger Games” series.
On an outside wall of the school, which was partially burned Sunday the soldiers, is scrawled graffiti with an ominous warning: “I will be back, you (expletive) who ran away.”