Military junta threatens militias with torture and killings if they go to AA

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🟥The military junta also threatened to shoot from behind if they flee the battlefield, according to the AA informant

Naing Win Soe, a civilian conscript who went to AA, said that the military junta had threatened to torture and kill militia members who went to the frontline battlefield if they went to AA, which controls 14 townships in Rakhine State.

Personal Identification Number: 142952 Naing Win Soe, a resident of Kaw Hmu Township, Yangon Region, was forcibly recruited for military service on January 2, 2025. 

Ko Naing Win Soe was sent to Ye Mon township to attend military training, and after two and a half months of training, he was sent to the front line of the reorganized 55th Division in Sittwe, Rakhine State. 

Upon arriving at the forward outpost of the High Island in Sittwe, the soldiers’ superiors threatened the soldiers with torture and death if they went to the AA, according to Naing Win Soe. 

“The superiors threatened that if you were arrested by the AA or if you went to the AA, you would be tortured in various ways, beaten with ropes, cut off your head, and starved,”

said Naing Win Soe, a soldier who went to the AA.  The military junta’s senior officers have been sharing photos and videos of the torture and death of those they have captured since military training.  

Soldier Naing Win Soe also said that they are using video files to spread propaganda and show it to trainees.

In addition, since the people of the People’s Army are threatened with shooting from behind if they flee the battlefield, they will not allow anyone to flee, said Soldier Naing Win Soe. 

“They are threatening to shoot from behind if they flee the battlefield. That’s why our friends don’t come here either. They are terrorizing us. They usually take away our phones. We don’t communicate with our parents. We don’t communicate with the outside world either. They keep us in the dark,”

said Soldier Naing Win Soe, who spoke to AA.  While serving in the forward outpost of the High Kyun forward outpost in Sittwe, the People’s Army soldier Naing Win Soe said that he was bullied in the army,  The AA announced on July 20 that it had joined the Arakan Army on July 10, 2025, after being pressured to destroy the homes and religious buildings of innocent people. 

Soldier Naing Win Soe, while on the frontline battlefield in Sittwe, said he entered Rakhine villages and, under orders and pressure from above, destroyed homes and monasteries in the villages without thinking, built bunkers, communication tunnels, and bomb shelters. 

The Arakan Army announced on July 15 that young people from all over Burma who were forcibly recruited by the military junta and subjected to various forms of torture can join the AA at any time and that they will be guaranteed the safety of their lives. 

Naing Win Soe, who joined the AA, said,

“When I joined the AA, they told me that the AA welcomed me differently. They treat us like brothers. They help us with food and clothes. If we are not healthy, the AA helps us with medicine. The AA is not like that because they say so.” 

The AA also said that the military junta is trying hard to recruit young people from all over the country to regain the camps they lost across Myanmar. 

The military junta is recruiting 5,000 trainees per batch, and it has reached 15th batch, and it is also learned that the militias who have completed the training are constantly being sent to the frontline.