Myanmar army defector recounts heavy losses inflicted by Chin rebels, shows evidence

A Myanmar army officer who defected and fled the country has detailed battlefield losses to rebels in the southern part of Chin state, with at least 50 soldiers killed and 200 badly wounded in 2021 by opposition fighters with home-made weapons.

Kaung Thu Win, a captain who defected in December, offered a rare first-hand account of intensified fighting in Chin, in Myanmar’s northwest, where the military junta has faced some of the fiercest armed resistance since it seized power a year ago.

He said he switched sides after hearing reports by colleagues of military abuses during clashes last year. Speaking in northeastern India where he and his family have fled, the 32-year-old showed Reuters his national and military identity cards and detailed 12 incidents between May and December in which soldiers were killed or wounded by rebels.

He also showed Reuters some 30 classified army documents he said backed up his version of recent events in southern Chin state, where civilians opposed to the coup have taken up arms and are working with an established ethnic insurgent group. He based his estimate of military casualties on that information.

The documents, stored on his mobile device, add new details of a major clash near the town of Mindat that have not previously been reported. They provide further evidence of a growing popular rebellion against Myanmar’s military rulers that has spread across the country.

Four other Myanmar defectors who reviewed some of the documents said they mirrored others they had seen in terms of language, format and descriptions of combat.

Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, has acknowledged battlefield losses, but it has not provided details. The Tatmadaw did not respond to requests for comment on events in Chin, the account given by Kaung Thu Win or the documents he produced. The military has previously described armed groups opposed to the junta as “terrorists”.