Myanmar’s security forces moved in, and the street lamps went black. In house after house, people shut off their lights. Darkness swallowed the block.
Huddled inside her home in this neighborhood of Yangon, 19-year-old Shwe dared to peek out her window into the inky night. A flashlight shone back, and a man’s voice ordered her not to look.
Two gunshots rang out. Then a male voice screamed for help.
Illustration: Yusha
When the military trucks rolled away, Shwe and her family emerged to look for her 15-year-old brother, worried about frequent abductions by security forces.
“I could feel my blood thumping,” she said. “I had a feeling that he might be taken.”
Across Myanmar, security forces are arresting and forcibly disappearing thousands of people, especially boys and young men, in a sweeping bid to break the back of a three-month uprising against the military takeover in early February.
In most cases, the families of those taken do not know where they are, an Associated Press (AP) analysis of more than 3,500 arrests since the coup found.
UNICEF has information on 1,000 cases of children or young people who have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, many without access to lawyers or their families.
Although it is difficult to get exact data, the majority are boys, the UN agency said.
It is a technique the military has long used to instill fear and crush democracy movements.
The boys and young men are taken from homes, businesses and streets, under the cover of night and sometimes in the brightness of day.
Some end up dead. Many are imprisoned and sometimes tortured. Many more are missing.
“We’ve definitely moved into a situation of mass enforced disappearances,” said Matthew Smith, cofounder of the human rights group Fortify Rights, which has collected evidence of detainees being killed in custody. “We’re documenting and seeing widespread and systematic arbitrary arrests.”
The AP is withholding Shwe’s full name, along with those of several others, to protect them from retaliation by the military.
The vehicle parts shop in Shwe’s neighborhood was a regular hangout for local boys. On the night of March 21, her brother had gone there to relax like he usually did.
As Shwe approached the shop, she saw that it had been ransacked. Frantic, she and her father scoured the building for any sign of their beloved boy, but he was gone and the floor was covered in blood.
Over the past few months, the conflict in Myanmar has become increasingly bloody. Security forces have killed more than 700 people, including a boy as young as nine years old.
In the meantime, the faces of the missing have flooded the Internet in growing numbers. Online videos show soldiers and police beating and kicking young men as they are shoved into vans, even forcing captives to crawl on all fours and hop like frogs.
Photos of young people detained by security forces have also begun circulating online and on military-controlled Myawaddy TV, their faces bloodied, with clear markings of beatings and possible torture.
The military’s openness in broadcasting such photographs and brutalizing people in daylight is one more sign that its goal is to intimidate.
At least 3,500 people have been detained since the takeover, more than three-quarters of whom are male, according to an analysis of data collected by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which monitors deaths and arrests.
Of the 419 men whose ages are in the group’s database, nearly two-thirds are under age 30 and 78 are teenagers.
Nearly 2,700 of the detainees are held at undisclosed locations, an AAPP spokesman said.
The group said that the numbers are likely an undercount.
“The military are trying to turn civilians, striking workers and children into enemies,” AAPP joint secretary Ko Bo Kyi said. “They think if they can kill off the boys and young men, then they can kill off the revolution.”
After receiving questions from the AP, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, called a Zoom news conference, during which it dubbed the AAPP a “baseless organization,” suggested that its data was inaccurate and denied that security forces are targeting young men.
“The security forces are not arresting based on genders and ages,” military spokeswoman Aye Thazin Myint said. “They are only detaining anyone who is rioting, protesting, causing unrest or any actions along those lines.”
Some of those snatched by security forces were protesting. Some have links to the military’s rival political party, most notably Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the elected government that the military toppled and is now under house arrest.
Others are taken for no discernible reason. They are typically charged with Section 505(A) of the Burmese Penal Code, which, in part, criminalizes comments that “cause fear” or spread “false news.”
The military and the police, which falls under the Tatmadaw’s command via the Burmese Ministry of Home Affairs, have been involved in the arrests and disappearances, sometimes working in tandem, according to interviews with detainees and their families.
Experts said that this suggests a coordinated strategy.
“The Myanmar Police Force and the Tatmadaw moved in in a very deliberate way, in a coordinated way, in similar ways, in disparate locations, which to us would indicate that they were working according to orders,” Smith said. “It would appear as though there was ... some national level communication and coordination taking place.”
Manny Maung, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that one woman she spoke with described being viciously beaten by police until a person who looked like a senior military official told them to stop.
“They’re definitely following orders from military officials,” Maung said. “And whether they’re coordinating, they’re certainly turning up to places together.”
So desperate for information are the loved ones of the lost that some families have resorted to a grim experiment: They send food into the prisons and hope that if it is not sent back, that means their relatives are still inside.
Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, a Burmese human rights advocate, is intimately acquainted with the Tatmadaw’s tactics. Her father, former student leader and democracy advocate Mya Aye, was arrested during a 1988 uprising against military rule, and the family waited months before they learned that he was in prison.
He was arrested again on the first day of this year’s military takeover.
For two months, the military gave Wai Hnin Pwint Thon’s family no information on his whereabouts. On April 1, the family learned that he was being held at Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison.
“I can’t imagine families of young people, who are 19, 20, 21, in prison. We are this worried, and we’re used to this situation,” she said. “I’m trying to hold onto hope, but the situation is getting worse every day.”
MEE’S VILLAGE
Mee, a 27-year-old woman who lives in the northern region of Mandalay, watched as children on motorbikes raced past her house toward the woods. Not long after, the elders of her village arrived with a dire warning: All the boys must leave and get somewhere safe, because the soldiers might be coming.
Just two hours later, the elders asked the girls to hide, too.
The military’s scare tactics have proven enormously effective. In villages and cities across the country, residents regularly take turns holding night watches, banging pots and pans, or yelling to neighbors from the street if soldiers or police are spotted.
“I am more afraid of being arrested than getting shot,” said one 29-year-old man who was arrested, beaten and later released, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. “I have a chance of dying on the spot with just one shot. But being arrested, I am afraid that they would torture me.”
Fearing for her life on that March afternoon, Mee and hundreds of fellow villagers fled to pineapple farms in the surrounding hills. When she arrived, she saw scores of people from other villages hiding in the forest.
That night, as mosquitos swarmed and sounds from the forest haunted them, the women stayed inside a small bamboo tent while the boys took turns standing guard. No one slept.
Mee was terrified, but not surprised. Many of the villagers had run from the military and hidden in the woods before.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said.
For decades, the Tatmadaw has used arbitrary arrests, disappearances, forced labor and other abuses to crush democracy movements and suppress minorities, including its notoriously brutal 2017 campaign of persecution against Rohingya Muslims.
“Sometimes, communities are asked to provide a number of young men on a ‘voluntary’ basis; sometimes they are taken,” Laetitia van den Assum, a former diplomat and member of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, said in an e-mail.
Arbitrary arrests continue across the country on a daily basis.
Just two weeks earlier, a few minutes from Mee’s village, 24-year-old philosophy student Ko Ko was walking home from a protest with a friend when they were arrested.
His parents learned of their imprisonment from friends of friends, not officials. More than a month later, his parents have still not heard from their only son, said Han, a neighbor.
Ko Ko is part of an unlucky cohort: At least 44 people taken from the town are yet to be released, Han said.
While many of the young men in Mee’s village returned home after two nights in the pineapple fields, some continue to sleep there. Mee has since gone back to her village.
Whenever she sees a soldier, she runs. However, her fear has largely given way to fury.
“I was angry that night, and I am still angry,” she said. “It’s so frustrating that the people who are supposed to be protecting our lives, our safety, our livelihoods and our homes are the people who are chasing us and killing us. We are helpless.”
SINISTER SILENCE
The glass was shattering, and there was nowhere left for the 21-year-old university student to run. The soldiers were smashing through the front doors of the house in Mandalay.
The chaos of such raids is usually followed by a sinister silence, with the families of the taken rarely hearing from officials.
However, the accounts of some survivors who dare to speak about their ordeals help fill the void of what often happens next.
The student, who asked that his name be withheld out of fear of retaliation, had taken refuge in the house along with about 100 others after security forces stormed a rally they attended. The soldiers had thrown tear gas at them, forcing them to flee.
Now he and a half-dozen others were cornered in a bathroom on the home’s second level. Downstairs, the security forces used a slingshot and the butt of a gun to break through the doors.
The soldiers began beating the boys they found inside so viciously that a few of them sustained serious head wounds. They urinated on one young man.
The student watched as the glass above the bathroom door imploded.
“They are here,” the soldiers yelled and burst in, guns drawn.
He bowed his head, as anyone who looked at the soldiers was kicked. The soldiers kicked him anyway, twice in the waist, and hit him twice in the head.
As he was marched down the stairs, he saw a soldier with a gun standing on nearly every step.
He and about 30 other young men were arrested and ushered into a prison van.
The military and police were there.
The soldiers threatened to burn the van and tauntingly offered the detainees juice before throwing it at them.
When they arrived at the prison, the young man saw 400 to 500 people in a temporary holding area. The next day, he was charged for breaching Section 505(A).
He and about 50 others spent nine days jammed into one room. There were only two toilets. They were allowed out of the cell twice a day to clean themselves. The same water was used for showering, drinking, washing dishes and using the toilet.
When the young man learned that he would be transferred to the main prison, he wanted to cry.
A few days before his arrest, he had been looking at missing persons posts on social media. Now he realized that most of those people were probably in prison like him.
The young man had good reason to be frightened.
“People are disappearing and turning up dead,” Maung said. “We have had primary reports also of torture while they’re in custody.”
Human Rights Watch found that some people detained at Insein were subjected to beatings, stress positions and severe interrogation tactics, up until March 4, Maung said.
After that, guards began taking prisoners to second locations and torturing them, then returning them to Insein, she added.
In Mandalay, the young man’s family was sick with worry. Some of his friends told them that he had been arrested; the authorities never called them.
His family sent food into the prison for him, but even when it was not returned, they could not be sure that he was inside.
They heard reports about protesters being tortured. His sisters cried constantly.
Thirteen days after his arrest, the young man was allowed to speak with his sister for 10 minutes.
A week later, an official ordered him to pack his things. In shock, he realized that he was being released.
There was no time to say goodbye to his friends. The officials took videos and photographs of him and about 20 others, and told them to sign statements promising they would not break the law again.
Then they were set free.
He did not feel lucky; he felt horrible. He did not understand why he had been singled out for release while his friends were still inside.
“None of us really feel safe living our normal lives now. For me now, I have reservations walking alone outside even in my neighborhood,” he said. “I feel worried to see the parents of my friends in the neighborhood, because I am out and their children are not.”
SHWE’S BROTHER
Back in Yangon, Shwe stared at the puddles of blood on the floor of the shop where her brother had been. It looked as if the security forces had half-heartedly tried to wash it away, but red pools remained.
Maybe the blood was not his, she told herself.
Shwe’s brother and three other young men from the shop had been hauled away. Neighbors told the family that police and soldiers had been there.
The neighbors said that the security forces might have targeted the boys because they spotted someone inside the shop with a steel dart slingshot.
At 2am, a police officer called, saying that Shwe’s brother was at a military hospital and had been shot in the hand.
The family later learned that security forces had shot another young man’s finger during the raid.
Shwe said that her family told police that her brother was underage.
The officers reassured them that because he was a minor, he probably would not be charged, she said.
At about 7am, the family went to the hospital to bring him food, but their pleas to see him were rejected.
Shwe and her family were later told that he had been moved to a prison hospital.
Then, on the night of March 27, the news came that stunned them: Her brother and the three others had been charged with possession of weapons and sentenced to three years in prison.
They were allowed one brief telephone call with him when he was first in the hospital and nothing since.
Shwe heard her brother tell their anguished mother that he was ok, she said, but added that she has no idea if that is still true.
She worries for her brother, a quiet boy who loves playing games. She worries, too, for their mother, who cries and cries, and for their father, who aches for his only son.
For now, they can do little more than wait and hope: That he will not be beaten. That he will get a pardon. That the Burmese public will soon feel safe again.
“Even though we are all in distress, we try to look on the bright side that at least we know where he is,” she said. “We are lucky that he was only abducted.”
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