Battle of Demoso

Last updated
Battle of Demoso (2021)
Part of Myanmar civil war (2021–present)
DateMay 24 – June 15, 2021
Location
Demoso, Demoso Township, Karenni State, Myanmar
19°32′38″N97°09′43″E / 19.544°N 97.162°E / 19.544; 97.162
Result Ceasefire
Belligerents

KNDF Flag.jpg Karenni Nationalities Defence Force

Flag of the Karenni National Progressive Party.svg Karenni National Progressive Party

Flag of the Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) of Myanmar.svg  Tatmadaw
Units involved
Unknown 427th Infantry Battalion
102nd Infantry Battalion
Casualties and losses
170+ killed (as of June 6) [1] 11+ killed [1] (as of June 6)
70 civilians killed (first battle) [2]

The First Battle of Demoso began on May 21, 2021, between the forces of the State Administration Council junta (known as the Tatmadaw) and Karenni separatist groups allied with the anti-junta People's Defence Force (PDF) during the 2021 Myanmar civil war. The battle took place over the span of a few weeks in the city of Demoso and surrounding villages, eventually ending in a ceasefire between the two parties.

Contents

Prelude

Kayah State, also known as Karenni state, is located in eastern Myanmar and is subdivided into townships. The capital of Demoso Township is the city of Demoso, with much of the rest of the township being rural, small villages. [3] The Karen people in the area have been fighting a low-level conflict for independence with the Burmese Army, also known as the Tatmadaw, since 1949. The conflict was paused in 2015 after a peace deal was signed with the government of Aung San Suu Kyi after the 2015 Myanmar general election as Myanmar transitioned to a democracy. [4]

On February 1, 2021, military leadership in the Tatmadaw overthrew the democratic government, and instated a military junta, sparking protests across the country. [5] The first protests in Demoso broke out on February 11, with police arresting seven protesters. [6] In the protests, 30,000 people participated, including much of the Demoso administration. One of the speakers was Demoso town administrator, U Zowani, who opposed the junta along with several other district administrators. [7] By February 14, dozens of police officers from Demoso and Loikaw townships protested in Loikaw against the junta. [8] Afterwards, protests died down in Demoso until May.

On May 21, in Marnaplaw village, a suburb of the city, unknown insurgents attacked a junta patrol, killing two policemen, three junta soldiers, and injuring two more. The insurgents then made their way to Ngwetaung ward, where one more policeman was killed. In response, several of the insurgents were arrested. [9] Clashes also broke out on May 23, with the People's Defence Force, the armed wing of the government-in-exile, capturing a military checkpoint in between Loikaw and Demoso. [10]

Battle

The battle in the city of Demoso began at 4am on May 24, when PDF forces attacked the Demoso police station, which was understaffed at the time. [11] In response, the junta's 427th Infantry Battalion and 102nd Infantry Battalion, both based in Demoso, sent 60-70 soldiers as reinforcements, and began firing artillery from the Ngwetaung Reservoir. [11] Residents of Demoso stated that much of the artillery hit civilian homes in Dawngankha Ward and Tanang U Koi village. In the artillery barrage, two people were killed. [11] Clashes also broke out along the Ngwetaung Reservoir dam between Tatmadaw troops and the Karenni People's Defence Force. [11]

On May 27, two men in the Nguplaw delivering food to refugees were killed by junta troops. That same day, a member of the Free Burma Rangers was killed near Ngwetaung Reservoir. [12] In the battles between May 24–25, two KPDF soldiers were killed, and the number of junta troops killed is unknown. [13] On the night of May 28, clashes broke out again for the first time since the 25th, with PDF forces attempting to recapture the Demoso police station. [14] The fighting occurred between 7-12pm, and died down by the morning of May 29. [15] That same day, junta artillery bombarded Demoso. [16] On May 31, junta troops used helicopters to bombard Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) positions, causing an unknown number of casualties. [17] In the clashes, junta troops blew up two bridges connecting Demoso to Hpruso. [18] Protests broke out in the junta-controlled villages of Kaya Pune[ where? ] and Mobye in neighbouring Pekhon Township, Shan State on June 2. [19] That same day, small skirmishes ensued between PDF and the junta after a civilian was injured. [20]

A small skirmish occurred near the Demoso police station on June 5, damaging several houses. [21] The next day, junta troops launched an offensive onto Dawngankha ward, burning down several houses and a church. In the battle, one PDF member was killed, and several others were injured. [22] The KNDF also stated one of their soldiers was killed during the battle. On June 8, Tatmadaw forces launched attacks from Twi Libila mountain on the outskirts of the city, while KNDF and Tatmadaw forces clashed in the village of Sodekhu. [23] Around 400 Tatmadaw reinforcements also arrived towards the border of Karenni and Shan states. [23] By June 9, Tatmadaw forces increased their attacks and incursions onto Dawngankha Ward, while KNDF and PDF controlled most of western Demoso. [24] The Tatmadaw had some control over the eastern part of the city. [24]

A June 4 memo by the Kayah State administration stated that the goal of junta troops was to enter Demoso through the Taungoo-Thantaunggyi road entering the city via the western ward of Dawngankha. [24] The administration also urged civilians in villages and wards around the road to stay safe. Khu Daniel, the leader of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), released a statement supporting the Demoso PDF. [24] In clashes on June 11, Lieutenant Colonel Chufe of the KNPP's armed wing, Karenni Army, was killed. [25] Later, on June 15, clashes in Ngwetaung ward destroyed many houses, and caused refugees to flee towards the city of Demoso. [26] Residents of Ngwetaung stated that before their houses were torched, Tatmadaw soldiers looted items from the houses. The KNDF and Karenni PDF denied that their troops were present in Ngwetaung at the time of the arson. Whenever residents returned to Ngwetaung days later, several bodies of civilians were discovered, and over 40 houses were torched. [27] On June 15, the KNDF and Demoso PDF began talks for a ceasefire, which mostly succeeded, with the exception of some fringe elements of the Demoso PDF. [27]

Aftermath

Residents of Htipo Klo, a group of villages in Demoso township, told the BBC that Tatmadaw troops stationed there were extorting locals out of money, food, and belongings despite the ceasefire. [28] The military council denied these lootings. Small shootouts occurred near Demoso city as well. [28] On July 12, four bodies of civilians were found in a toilet in a Tatmadaw-occupied village. [29] On August 12, artillery from the 102nd Battalion injured one person in Nyongone village. [30] Short clashes also broke out in Hiphok village on August 13, forcing 2,000 people to flee. [31] [32] Five civilians were killed in the fighting.

Impact

In the first week of fighting, the Tatmadaw blocked all vehicles from entering or exiting Karenni State, causing food shortages. [18] In June 2023, Christian organizations expressed concern for the amount of refugees fleeing from the fighting in Demoso township. [33] By June 6, 2021, aid groups in Karenni State stated over 100,000 refugees were fleeing the fighting. [1] A resident of Dawngankha ward stated that many civilians from the area fled to PDF-controlled areas of Demoso, so the Tatmadaw employed scorched earth tactics to prevent refugees fleeing to houses recaptured by the PDF. [24]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Military Forces in Demoso Shoot at Christian Churches- Radio Free Asia Archived June 6, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Four Dead Bodies Found in Demoso Archived August 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ "Myanmar: Demoso Township - Kayah State (20 April 2020) - Myanmar | ReliefWeb". reliefweb.int. 2020-04-20. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  4. ↑ "Myanmar signs ceasefire with eight armed groups". Reuters. 2015-10-15. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  5. ↑ "Myanmar's Troubled History: Coups, Military Rule, and Ethnic Conflict". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  6. ↑ "DVB | ဒီးမော့ဆို ဆန္ဒပြပြည်သူအချို့ ငွေတောင်ဆည်အနီး ဖမ်းဆီးခံရ". ကယားပြည်နယ် လွိုင်ကော်ဆန္ဒပြပွဲမှာ လာရောက်ပူးပေါင်းပြီး ပြန်သွားတဲ့ ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့နယ်က ပြည်သူအချို့ကို ငွေတောင်ဆည်အနီးမှာ ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့က ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့ပါတယ်။ဖမ်းဆီးခံရသူတွေကတော့ ကျောင်းဆရာမ ၄ ဦးအပါအဝင်…. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  7. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့နယ်က အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးဝန်ထမ်း ၃၀ ကျော် ဆန္ဒပြပွဲမှာ ပါဝင်လာ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  8. ↑ "DVB | လွိုင်ကော်တွင် အင်အားသိန်းချီ ဆန္ဒပြ၊ ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင် ၃ ဦး ထပ်မံပူးပေါင်းလာဖြင့် ၆၄ ဦးရှိလာ". ကယားပြည်နယ် လွိုင်ကော်မြို့မှာ ဒီကနေ့ ပြုလုပ်တဲ့ စစ်အာဏာရှင်ဆန့်ကျင် ဆန္ဒပြပွဲရဲ့ ၇ ရက်မြောက်နေ့ ဆက်လက်ကျင်းပနေပြီး ပညာရေးအပါအဝင် ဌာနအတော်များများက ဝန်ထမ်းတွေနဲ့ ပြည်သူ သိန်းချီ ပါဝင်ခဲ့ကြပါတယ်။ …. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  9. ↑ "ကယားပြည်နယ် ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့နယ်၌ လက်နက်ကိုင် အဖွဲ့များက ပစ်ခတ်တိုက်ခိုက်သဖြင့် ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်သုံးဦး ကျဆုံးပြီး လက်နက်ကိုင်များဘက်မှ သုံးဦးသေဆုံးကာ ၁၃ ဦး ဖမ်းဆီးရမိဟု ထုတ်ပြန်". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  10. ↑ "မိုးဗြဲ၊ လွိုင်ကော်နဲ့ ဒီမော့ဆို မြို့နယ်တွေမှာ တိုက်ပွဲဖြစ်ပွား". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-05-23. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  11. 1 2 3 4 "ငွေတောင်ပြည်မှသေနတ်သံများ၊ ယမ်းငွေ့များ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  12. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုပစ်ခတ်မှုတွင် ဒေသခံ ၃ ဦး သေဆုံး". Myanmar Now. May 27, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  13. ↑ "လွိုင်ကော်နှင့်ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့များတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီမှ တိုက်ပွဲများမရှိဘဲ အကြောင်းမဲ့ဆက်တိုက်ပစ်ခတ်မှုများရှိနေ". Mizzima. May 28, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  14. ↑ "DVB | ဒီးမော့ဆိုတွင် ယနေ့ညပိုင်း တိုက်ပွဲပြင်းထန်". ကယားပြည်နယ် ဒီးမော့ဆိုမှာ မေလ ၂၈ ရက် ဒီနေ့ ညပိုင်းက တိုက်ပွဲပြင်းထန်နေတယ်လို့ ကယား PDF အဖွဲ့ဝင်တစ်ဦးက ပြောပါတယ်။စစ်ကောင်စီဘက်က အပြစ်မရှိတဲ့သူတွေ၊ ဘုရားကျောင်းတွေကို ပစ်ခတ်နေတာတွေ ရှိနေတာကြောင့် P…. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  15. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုရဲစခန်း ဒေသခံကာကွယ်ရေးအဖွဲ့တွေ တိုက်ခိုက်". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-05-29. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  16. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုတွင် လက်ရှိနှစ်ဘက်အပြန်အလှန်တိုက်ပွဲများမရှိသော်လည်း အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီဘက်မှ တဖက်သတ်ပစ်ခတ်မှုများရှိ". Mizzima. May 30, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  17. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်မှ ရဟတ်ယာဉ် နှစ်စီးဖြင့်အဆက်မပြတ်ပစ်ခတ်နေ". Mizzima. May 31, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  18. 1 2 "ဒီးမော့ဆို-ဖရူဆိုလမ်း တံတားနှစ်စင်း မိုင်းခွဲ ဖျက်ဆီးခံရ". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-05-31. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  19. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုနဲ့ မိုးဗြဲမှာ ပစ်ခတ်တိုက်ခိုက်မှုတွေ ဖြစ်ပွား". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-06-02. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  20. ↑ "DVB | ဒီးမော့ဆိုနှင့် မိုးဗြဲဘက်ကို အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်က လက်နက်ကြီးဖြင့် ပစ်ခတ်တိုက်ခိုက်". ကယားပြည်နယ်၊ ဒီးမော့ဆိုနဲ့ မိုးဗြဲဘက်ကို အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်ဖွဲ့တွေက ဒီကနေ့ ဇွန်လ ၂ ရက်မှာ ၁၅ မိနစ်ခြား တစ်ခါလောက် လက်နက်ကြီးနဲ့ ပစ်ခတ်တိုက်ခိုက်နေတယ်လို့ ကရင်နီအမျိုးသားကာကွယ်ရေးတပ် (KNDF) တာဝန်ရ…. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  21. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုနဲ့ မိုးဗြဲမှာ တိုက်ပွဲဆက်ဖြစ်၊ နှစ်ဖက်ထိခိုက်မှုရှိ". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-06-05. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  22. ↑ "ကယား ဒီးမော့ဆိုနဲ့ ချင်း မင်းတပ်မှာ စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်တွေ စစ်ဆင်". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-06-06. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  23. 1 2 "DVB | ဒီးမော့ဆိုတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်၏ ပစ်ခတ်မှုကြောင့် လူနေအိမ်အများအပြား ပျက်စီးဆုံးရှုံး". ကယားပြည်နယ်၊ ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့နယ်မှာ ဇွန်လ ၈ ရက်နေ့က အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်တွေက လူနေရပ်ကွက်တွေထဲကို လက်နက်ကြီး၊ လက်နက်ငယ်တွေနဲ့ ပစ်ခတ်တိုက်ခိုက်ခဲ့တာကြောင့် ဒေသခံ တိုင်းရင်းသား ပြည်သူလူထုတွေရဲ့ နေအိမ်တ…. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  24. 1 2 3 4 5 ဧရာဝတီ (2021-06-09). "ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့ကို ထိန်းချုပ်နိုင်ရေး အာဏာသိမ်းတပ် ကြိုးပမ်း". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  25. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆိုတိုက်ပွဲတွင်ကျဆုံးသွားသည့် ကရင်နီတပ်မတော်( KNPP) ဒုဗိုလ်ရှေးရယ် ကိုအခမ်းအနားဖြင့် သဂြိုလ်". Mizzima. June 11, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  26. ↑ ဧရာဝတီ (2021-06-15). "ဒီးမော့ဆို ငွေတောင်ကျေးရွာရှိ အိမ်နှင့်ဆိုင်ခန်းများ ဖောက်ထွင်းဖျက်ဆီးခံရ". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  27. 1 2 ဧရာဝတီ (2021-06-17). "ဒီးမော့ဆို၌ အမည်မသိအလောင်းများ ပြန့်ကြဲနေရာ ဒေသခံများ သဂြိုဟ်ပေးနေရ". ဧရာဝတီ (in Burmese). Archived from the original on August 21, 2023. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  28. 1 2 "ဒီးမော့ဆိုမှာ စစ်ကောင်စီက တပ်စွဲထား၊ ဒေသခံနေအိမ်တွေဖောက်ထွင်းခံရတာတွေရှိနေ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  29. ↑ "ဒီးမော့ဆို စံပြရွာမှာ အိမ်သာကျင်းထဲ မြှုပ်ထားတဲ့ ရုပ်အလောင်း လေးခု တွေ့ရှိ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  30. ↑ ဧရာဝတီ (2021-08-12). "စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ပစ်ခတ်မှုကြောင့် ကယားတွင် အရပ်သား နှစ်ဦး ဒဏ်ရာရ". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  31. ↑ "ဒီမော့ဆို ဖယ်ခုံနဲ့ ချင်း-မင်းတပ်မှာ တိုက်ပွဲတွေဖြစ်ပွား". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-08-14. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  32. ↑ ဧရာဝတီ (2021-08-16). "ဒီးမော့ဆို၌ စစ်တပ်က အရပ်သားများကို ဖမ်း၍ ရှေ့တန်းသို့ ချုပ်နှောင် ခေါ်သွား". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  33. ↑ "ကယားပြည်နယ်တွင်း လေကြောင်းပစ်ခတ်မှု ခရစ်ယာန်အဖွဲ့အစည်းတွေ စိုးရိမ်". ဗွီအိုအေ (in Burmese). 2021-06-03. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
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