• Home
• about
• Activities
• Contact
• Programs
• Manual

• Analysis
• Commentary
• Feature
• General Election
• Monthly Report
• News
• PDF Format
• Special Report
• Video Clips

Subscribe

Voters highlight poor communication and transparency in Thanbyuzayat Township local elections

Villagers in Mon State’s Thanbyuzayat Township have complained about a lack of communication and transparency in recent local elections.

Throughout January, Thanbyuzayat Township residents have taken part in elections to select new village heads, in polls that will cover 41 village tracts. According to Thanbyuzayat Township’s administrator, the elections will run from January 12 to 31, and have so far been completed in 39 village tracts. Read more

Yebyu Township villagers speak out about splinter group extortion

Yebyu: On the border of southern Ye Township, Mon State and northern Yebyu Township, Tenasserim Region, villagers are beginning to speak out about frequent demands for money from Mon splinter groups. Read more

Female candidate beats male competition in Mon State village poll

WCRP:On Sunday Mi Ja Lon Htaw, a former schoolteacher and Mon National Education Committee (MNEC) administrator, beat male opponents to be elected administrator of Tarana village tract, located in Kyiakmayaw Township, Mon State. Read more

Unknown armed group extorts over 1m Kyat in one night from Yebyu Township villagers

On the night of December 26 last year, an unknown Mon armed group extorted over 1 million Kyat from residents in three Tenasserim Division villages. The villages visited by the armed group were located in Min Thar and Nat Gyi Sin village tracts, situated in Tenasserim Division’s Yebyu Township. Read more

Child labour rife on Setse Beach

WCRP:In the town surrounding Setse Beach, located in Mon State’s Thanbyuzayat Township, concerns are being raised that children are increasingly being employed to service the popular beach’s burgeoning tourist industry.  Read more

Villagers dispute re-election of Southern Ye Village Administrator

Ye: Villagers in Kyon Nyae village tract, located in southern Ye, Mon State, have expressed disapproval over the re-election of their sitting Village Administrator, Nai Htun Kyi, who has served in his post for over 10 years. While the village committee remains supportive of Nai Htun Kyi, a group of villagers are preparing to send a letter of complaint to various government departments, demanding the election of a new village head. Read more

Wagaru village farmer’s appeal for justice falls on deaf ears

Thanbyuzayat: Five years ago, a member of a government-linked militia seized a half-acre piece of community land from Nai Kon Ru, a landowner who had for years been working on the land in Wagaru village, Thanbyuzayat Township, Mon State. Like many landowners across the country, he is still struggling to reclaim his land. Nai Kon Ru spoke to HURFOM amid growing frustration over the slow handling of his case and accusations of corruption among local officials handling appeals. Read more

Attempted robbery leads to deaths at Wagaru Village, Thanbyuzayat

HURFOM: On December 19, 2015, a militia force member offers arrested a 30-year-old man from Wagaru village, Thanbyuzayat Township, in connection to an attack and attempted robbery that left the victim and a police officer dead and three others seriously injured. Read more

Series of child kidnappings terrorizes Thanbyuzayat residents

HURFOM: Thanbyuzayat residents have been living in fear, after a spate of child kidnappings that has reportedly seen nine children abducted from Mon communities in the area.

Just this Tuesday a group of residents in Kyar Kan Quarter, Thanbyuzayat, were arrested after attempting to apprehend a group of people mistakenly suspected of involvement in the abductions.

According to one local, residents demanded that police arrest the group, threatening that they would kill the suspected kidnappers if the police refused to detain them.

According to Kyae Mon Ong, a journalist from the Than Lwin Times, hundreds of local residents armed with sticks and knives gathered and proceeded to chase the suspects.

Kyae Mon Ong detailed, “They beat up and tried to capture the group…Child kidnapping has been very big news around Thanbyuzayat lately. Many children have disappeared…[Residents] are angry about the kidnappings. If they had caught the group they would have beaten them to death”.

Local police responded by taking some of the vigilante attackers into custody.

Residents’ mistaken suspicions about the group are thought to originate from rumours that eight people from Myitkyina, and of Shan-Chinese descent, were to blame for the recent spate of kidnappings, and were still at large in the area. While the rumours were correct to some degree, they failed to account for the fact that the eight suspect individuals had already been arrested in November in connection to the kidnappings, in Kwan Hlar village and Mudon town.

Local residents spoke out about how the five suspects arrested in Kwan Hlar village were alleged to have been posing as dentists in Yin Don and Kwan Hlar villages, lying in wait by the roadside and approaching unsupervised children, offering them money. They were also reported to have stopped families travelling on motorbikes, offering them dental services.

A local explained, “We were interested in this group because they told the children, ‘Uncles will come again’. People heard about this and we were suspicious about what they were doing. The villagers were waiting for them, waiting to arrest them”.

When the group returned to Kwan Hlar, local residents immediately approached three of them to check their identification. When they failed to produce ID, and when their dental credentials came into question after a phone call to Thanbyuzayat hospital, a large group of villagers surrounded the three ‘dentists’, capturing them and driving them to the NMSP office to the east of Yin Don.

Two of their associates, who fled after seeing the arrests, were also eventually detained by police, after trying to escape to Thanbyuzayat.

All suspects captured by Kwan Hlar villagers remain in custody while the allegations against them are investigated. Meanwhile, families in the area continue to live in fear, with no confirmation that all perpetrators behind the kidnappings have been caught.