Family members of the dead have also been forced into hiding, knowing soldiers are likely to come to their homes looking for corpses
After the coup regime’s forces murdered at least 20 people in Yangon’s South Dagon township on Monday and Tuesday, families held rushed funerals to prevent soldiers coming to steal their loved ones’ bodies.
Soldiers and police rampaged through 20 different wards in the township on Monday night, setting fire to sandbag barricades and shooting at people they found outside.
On Tuesday, troops once again arrived to destroy strongholds made by residents to defend themselves and shoot more people, locals told Myanmar Now.
One member of a South Dagon-based medical rescue team said her team helped treat about 20 injured people on Monday, adding that there were other wounded people who they did not treat.
“We only know the condition of those that we treated,” she said. “There are many wounded people as well as many rescue teams.”
Relief and rescue teams were hesitant to give out names or other details about people killed in the attacks in case soldiers used the information to locate and steal their bodies.
Soldiers have repeatedly stolen the corpses of protesters and others after murdering them in recent weeks. Last week troops raided the Mandalay home of the family of a young girl who was shot dead in a bid to take her body.
Some have speculated the military wants to prevent the graves of its victims becoming sites of martyrdom, but it could also simply be an attempt to inflict as much terror and cruelty as possible on the population. Thirty-seven-year-old Nay Lin Saw was cremated within hours after he was shot in the chest and died on the spot in South Dagon’s ward 107 on Monday.
“His body was cremated without any close family members,” said one of Nay Lin Saw’s cousins. “They left their house to go into hiding because they feared troops would come to them to take the body.”
The bullet penetrated Nay Lin Saw’s chest and also hit the leg of a person who was behind him, she added.
‘We can’t let them get the bodies’
Myo Ko Ko Oo, a 27-year-old resident of ward 72, was struck in the head by a bullet on Monday morning and died at the Thingangyun Sanpya hospital in the afternoon.
His wife, Khine Zin Oo, told Myanmar Now that she and other family members retrieved his body around 2pm on Tuesday and held a rushed funeral.
When she went to the hospital to get her husband, she saw the bodies of five other people who had been murdered by soldiers. Family members also cremated those bodies immediately at a local cemetery, she said.
“They were all cremated as soon as they got the bodies. We can’t let the soldiers get the bodies,” Khine Zin Oo said.
Myo Ko Ko Oo was employed at a workshop as a daily wage labourer and left behind two daughters who are six and two years old.
“It’s like my whole world has collapsed,” Khine Zin Oo said. “We relied only on him for our livelihood. I don’t even know what to do next and haven’t thought about it yet.”
At least 521 people have been killed by the regime since the February 1 coup, according to the latest tally from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
A frontline protester tasked with defending others in South Dagon said at least 40 people were injured on Monday and Tuesday and that he witnessed four people die.
“They didn’t even get treatment,” he told Myanmar Now. “The one who was shot in the head did not even have parts of his brain anymore.” Three died on the way to a medical team and one died on the spot, he added.
He was also present when troops apparently used heavy weaponry, believed to be a grenade or rocket launcher, against protesters. Video footage from South Dagon, widely shared on social media, appeared to show a section of a barricade being blown open by an explosion.
“We all were deafened by the noise for a moment and couldn’t even move,” he recalled. “We stood up to look at the troops after a while and they started shooting at us when we sat down again to cover ourselves.”
“We felt like we’d been blown away,” he said.
After they finished destroying sandbags in a given area, soldiers would fire at people continuously, he added.
“The sound of gunfire didn’t stop until nighttime. If it did it was only for five or ten minutes,” he said. “We couldn’t go out again after the crackdown. If anyone did, that person is definitely dead.”
On Tuesday morning, residents found a burnt corpse that was too badly disfigured for them to identify.
Source – Myanmar NOW ( https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/relatives-rush-to-cremate-victims-of-south-dagon-massacre-so-soldiers-cant-steal-their-bodies )
