Myanmar Junta Soldiers Beheaded And Mutilated Civilians In Apparent War Crimes In Sagaing Region

(BANGKOK, February 4, 2025)—Myanmar military junta soldiers attacked a village in the Sagaing Region and killed six civilians, including three who were decapitated and had their heads displayed on a fence in an apparent attempt to spread terror, Fortify Rights said today. In addition to killing civilians, deliberately terrorizing civilians is a war crime under international law. Local residents discovered the bodies when they returned to the village after the attack, which took place in October 2024.

Fortify Rights calls on member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) urgently refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC Chief Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute these and other crimes.

“These horrific crimes demonstrate how the junta continues to terrorize the Myanmar people with impunity,” said Sai Arkar, Human Rights Associate at Fortify Rights. “ICC member states can and must take steps to end the Myanmar military junta’s wanton savagery.”

According to residents and witnesses, on October 17, 2024, at approximately 7:30 a.m., Myanmar junta soldiers launched an attack on the village of Sipa (also known as Si Par) in Budalin Township, Sagaing Region. Junta soldiers opened fire on the village and burned down houses, forcing residents to flee. There were no other armed forces in or near the village other than junta forces at the time of the attack, said Fortify Rights.
 
Junta troops appear to have killed at least six civilian men during the attack and mutilated and decapitated three of them, displaying their severed heads in a deliberate act of psychological warfare against the civilian population. This gruesome display was intended to instill terror among survivors, force civilian displacement, and deter resistance, tactics that amount to war crimes under international law, said Fortify Rights.
 
Fortify Rights confirmed the identities of five of the six people killed, including Tin Hlaing, in his 80s (exact age unknown); Thet Aung, 42; Kyaung Po, 57; Yar Sein, in his 50s (exact age unknown); and Htay Lwin, also in his 50s (exact age unknown). Residents of Sipa found another body in the village that remains unidentified.
 
Fortify Rights interviewed eight witnesses with direct knowledge of the attack, including a relative of one of the victims and a man who witnessed junta soldiers detain a person who was later found dead. Fortify Rights also analyzed dozens of photographs shared by first responders. More than 20 photographs show charred bones and dismembered body parts, including amputated legs, hands, and genitals. Another ten photographs show three severed heads mounted on a bamboo house fence. In the photographs, some of the bodies appear to have been deliberately burned, with charred firewood and bamboo beside the bodies.  
 
Fortify Rights spoke to one Sipa resident who remained in the village after junta soldiers invaded. He told Fortify Rights how he saw junta soldiers arrest Tin Hlaing, one of the men later found beheaded, on October 17, 2024. He said:

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I was the only one in the village [at the time] other than those who were killed. … [The junta soldiers] cooked their meals at my [place] that day. … Around 4 p.m. [on October 17, 2024], I saw [junta soldiers] take U Tin Hlaing.

Another Sipa resident “Hla May,” (name changed for security), described the junta soldiers’ attack on the village, saying:

[The junta soldiers] entered the village around 7:30 a.m., firing their rifles. We were in the village at the time. We were a little way away at the time… They were firing recklessly [into the village] and began to torch the houses around 9:30 a.m. They stopped firing and torching for a bit in the early afternoon. They then started torching the village again around 3:30 p.m.

She and her husband fled the village but described the aftermath of the attack when they returned the following day:

We arrived in the village in the evening. We wandered around, trying to see which houses had been burned. Then we saw them [the bodies]. ... three bodies were burned and placed in a single compound. … The genitals of the men were placed in [their] mouths. Three more severed heads were put onto the fence of a neighboring home.

Another resident from Sipa village, “Thet Htwe,” (name changed for security), witnessed the attack on Sipa village from a distant hiding location, saying: “We saw the junta troops torching the village. We could see smoke streaming out of the village from there. We didn’t hear any gunfire from Sipa village when they [junta forces] were torching the houses since there were no clashes.”
 
“We saw dead bodies and body parts all over the village,” he told Fortify Rights, describing the scene when he returned to the village on October 19. “[The residents] had not removed the heads from the fence, so we saw this ourselves.”
 
A 26-six-year-old student, “Lin Maung” (name changed for security), who entered Sipa shortly after the junta troops left on October 17, described a similar scene, saying:

The moment we entered the village area, we came across a dead body that was located close to the monastery. Afterwards, when we walked further into the village, we came across two additional dead bodies. These bodies were cut up into pieces. The guts were removed from one of them.

“We found a total of five dead corpses in the village,” Lin Maung said. A sixth body was discovered later by other residents.
 
The attack on Sipa village was part of a more extensive attack by the military junta on Sagaing Region — an area of Myanmar that has become a stronghold of resistance to the military junta since it launched a deadly and illegal coup d’etat four years ago this week. Several People’s Defense Forces and ethnic armed organizations have engaged in frequent armed clashes with the military junta in Sagaing Region. More than one million civilians in the area have been forcibly displaced since the coup, and many are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.  
 
Sipa residents confirmed to Fortify Rights that junta troops issued a warning that they would start a military operation in response to an attack on junta troops by resistance fighters on September 30, 2024, near the junta’s Northwestern Regional Military Command Headquarters in Sagaing Region.
 
International humanitarian law — also known as the law of war — establishes basic rules for engaging in armed conflict, which includes the protection of civilians and “[p]ersons taking no active part in the hostilities.” Mutilation is considered a war crime both under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC. Additionally, the intentional use of beheadings and public displays of mutilated bodies as a means to terrorize communities violates the fundamental prohibition against targeting civilians through psychological warfare, as enshrined in Article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. Under Article 51(2), any acts or threats of violence intended to spread terror among civilians are explicitly prohibited, making such acts prosecutable as war crimes.
 
The display of severed heads is a hallmark tactic of terror, designed to psychologically break communities and force civilian displacement through fear, said Fortify Rights. Survivors and witnesses to the attack described to Fortify Rights how it instilled terror and fear among them and how it enforced civilian displacement.

This is not the first incident of the use of such terror tactics by junta soldiers in Sagaing Region: in 2023, villagers reported the beheading of at least one resistance fighter and civilian in Pale Township. Photographs of the beheadings are on file with Fortify Rights.
 
Given the ongoing crimes by the Myanmar junta, on October 25, 2024, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, urged ICC member states to refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC prosecutor. In his report to the U.N. General Assembly, Tom Andrews said: "Junta troops have killed civilians in ground assaults, including the mass killing of individuals already in the custody of junta forces. … Victims have been tortured, raped and beheaded, and their bodies burned."
 
Under Article 14 of the Rome Statute, ICC member states may request the Chief Prosecutor to investigate atrocity crimes. The process for ICC member states to refer a situation to the Chief Prosecutor involves a simple diplomatic letter with supporting documentation.
 
ICC member states should refer the situation to the ICC Prosecutor immediately and the Prosecutor should launch a full investigation into atrocity crimes by all parties to the armed conflict in Myanmar, focusing especially on the junta’s crimes since it launched a coup on February 1, 2021.

“ICC member states must now act to end the almost daily atrocity crimes taking place in Myanmar,” said Sai Arkar. “An ICC referral would send an important message to perpetrators and help swing the balance away from impunity and toward accountability.”

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