Thread by @RadioFreeAsia

Content Warning: Violence/Death/Torture

“I had to cut off the head, bro”

🧵 Images obtained by RFA from the phone of a junta soldier appear to show evidence of military atrocities in Myanmar’s #Sagaing region.

One of the photos on the phone shows around 30 men blindfolded with their hands tied behind their back, held by soldiers at a monastery. Two of what appear to be the same men are seen dead in photos taken a day later of five victims of an execution.

The video and photos were retrieved from a cell phone that was found by a villager in Ayadaw township where the military had been conducting operations. An intermediary who obtained the video and photos forwarded them to RFA in Washington.

The photos include many selfies of a soldier, who appears to have been the phone’s owner. “You said you killed 26 people. How did you kill them? Just shooting them with a gun?” asks the phone’s owner of one of his fellow soldiers in the video.

“Of course, we killed them with our guns. But not with our hands,” the soldier responds. “For us, we even killed a lot by slitting their throats. I, myself, killed five,” the phone’s owner says back.

“I have never [slit throats],” the third soldier chimes in. The second soldier then reconsiders his personal tally of death. “I think eight,” he says. “I killed eight [by slitting throats].”

Looking at the insignias on the men’s outfits and guns, it is clear that they are part of Myanmar’s vast military apparatus. Soldiers are seen wearing the arm badge of the army in at least one photo, specifically of the Northwest Military Command based in Sagaing Region.

The soldiers carry bamboo backpacks used by junta troops. Numbers on rifle butts in the photos even help identify one military unit. One defector told RFA that the numbers ‘708’ and ‘4’ seen on the guns indicate they belong to the 4th Company of the Light Infantry Battalion 708.

In another series of photos, a soldier is seen interrogating one badly beaten young man whose hands are tied up behind his back, threatening him with a knife held at his chest.

The statements made by the men in the video appear in line with reports of attacks on civilians by junta troops in Sagaing region and elsewhere in Myanmar, amid military offensives across the country. In all, RFA was provided with 144 photos taken between April 13 and June 8.

Local media reports suggest there were killings by the military in Ayadaw township around the time the photos on the cell phone were taken.

But RFA's research indicates the photos may actually have been taken in neighboring Ye-U township. One of the slain men in the May 11 photo was wearing a t-shirt advertising a grocery store in the township.

A resident of Ye-U told RFA that the image of the 30 men with their hands tied behind their backs was taken at the Mon Taing Pin monastery – the site of a massacre reported on by RFA last month.

Read our full investigation here: rfa.org/english/news/s…