Myanmar army soldiers knocked on U Thein Aung’s door one April morning while he was having tea with friends, and demanded that everyone accompany the platoon to another village.
When they reached a dangerous stretch in the mountains of Rakhine State, the men were ordered to walk 30 meters ahead. One stepped on a land mine and was smashed to pieces. Metal fragments hit Mr. Thein Aung on his arm and in his left eye.
“They threatened to kill us if we refused to go with them,” said Thein Aung, 65, who lost his eye. “It is very clear that they used us as human landmine detectors.”
The military and its brutal practices are an ubiquitous fear in Myanmar, which has intensified since the generals took full power in a coup last month. While security forces shoot peaceful demonstrators on city streets, the violence that is common in the countryside serves as a terrible reminder of the military’s long legacy of atrocities.
During decades of military rule, an army dominated by the Bamar majority operated with impunity against ethnic minorities, killing civilians and burning villages. The violence continued even when the army gave some authority to a government elected in a power-sharing deal that started in 2016.
The following year, the military expelled more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from the country, an ethnic cleansing campaign that a United Nations panel described as genocidal. The soldiers fought against ethnic rebel armies with the same cruelty, using men and boys as human shields on the battlefield and raping women and girls in their homes.
The generals are now fully back in charge, and the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, has turned its weapons on the masses, who have set up a national civil disobedience movement.
The crackdown widened on Monday in the face of a general strike, with security forces taking control of universities and hospitals and revoking press licenses from five media organizations. At least three protesters were shot dead.
More than 60 people have been killed since the February 1 coup, an increasingly bloody crackdown that recalls when the military suppressed pro-democracy protests in the past.
“This is an army with the heart of darkness,” said David Scott Mathieson, an independent analyst who has long studied military practices. “This is an unrepentant institution.”
Brutality is rooted in Tatmadaw. He came to power in a 1962 coup, saying he had to safeguard national unity. For decades, he fought for control of parts of the country, inhabited by ethnic minority groups, rich in jade, wood and other natural resources.
For the past three years, the Tatmadaw has waged war intermittently against ethnic rebel armies in three states, Rakhine, Shan and Kachin. The most intense combat was in Rakhine, where the Arakan Army, a Rakhine ethnic force, seeks greater autonomy.
Civilians are often victims of these long-standing conflicts, as 15 victims, family members or witnesses in these three states attested in interviews with The New York Times.
Six men described how they were wounded by landmines or gunshots when soldiers forced them to risk their lives. Several women reported being raped by soldiers, while others remembered husbands and children who never returned after the soldiers took them.
The Times was connected to the victims by local rights groups who documented their reports, went to the locals, interviewed witnesses and broadly corroborated the events. Human rights groups have also reported on these general practices.
A military spokesman declined to comment.
People who spoke to The Times detailed a pattern of abuse, in which soldiers forced civilians to serve as porters under threat of death. Men and boys were ordered to walk ahead of soldiers in conflict zones, often being used as human shields.
In October, Sayedul Amin, a 28-year-old Rohingya man, was fishing in a lake near his village, Lambarbill, in the state of Rakhine, when about 100 soldiers arrived. He said they arrested 14 men, including him, to carry bags of rice and other food. Several who refused were beaten.
“We were ordered to walk in front of the soldiers,” he said. “It looks like they wanted us to protect them if someone attacked.”
They had been walking for less than an hour when filming started, he said. He never saw who shot them. He was hit by two bullets. A boy of 10 and a boy of 18 were killed in front of him, with so many shots to the face and head that it was difficult to recognize.
The soldiers, he said, left the bodies for the villagers to bury.
Tatmadaw has forced at least 200 men and boys in Rakhine State to serve as battlefield bearers and human shields for the past three years, according to U Than Hla, a member of the board of directors of the Arakan CSO Network, a coalition of rights humans. Of those who were taken, 30 died and at least 70 are missing. Half were under 18 years old.
These practices have long been common in the states of Kachin and Shan, human rights groups say. But there are no similar data in the same period.
Women face their own horrors. Although Tatmadaw’s sexual violence is often not reported, the rape was systematic and widespread during the Rohingya’s ethnic cleansing, Human Rights Watch concluded. The same fate falls on women from other ethnic groups in conflict areas.
“Myanmar’s military is violating human rights in a number of ways,” said Zaw Zaw Min, founder of the Rakhine Human Rights Group. “Women are raped, villages are burned, properties are taken and people are taken as porters.”
In June, when soldiers arrived in the village of U Gar in Rakhine State, Daw Oo Htay Win, 37, said he hid in his home with his four children and his newborn granddaughter. That night, the child’s crying denounced his presence to four soldiers, who entered the house. They gave her a choice: to have sex with them or to die. For the next two hours, three soldiers raped her, while the fourth stood guard.
Mrs. Oo Htay Win, her daughters and the baby snuck out the back door in the morning and took refuge in the town of Sittwe, where she now lives. She said her husband, who was absent, abandoned her on hearing of the rape.
Although most victims of rape by soldiers remain silent, she has brought criminal charges. After the soldiers confessed, they were tried, found guilty and sentenced to 20 years.
“I hate these three soldiers for destroying my life,” she said. “I lost everything because of them.”
The convictions were a rare victory in a country where the military is rarely held accountable by civilians. And few victims receive compensation, even when they suffer permanent injuries and huge financial losses. If they do, it is minimal.
In the western part of the state of Rakhine, where traveling by the river is common, the Tatmadaw usually commands private boats to transport troops and supplies. In March 2019, U Maung Phyu Hla, 43, a boat owner from Mrauk-U Township, said the soldiers forced him to take troops on the Lay Myo River to fight the forces of the Arakan Army.
On the seventh trip upriver, they suffered a heavy fire. With a shot in the thigh, Maung Phyu Hla said he slipped in the water and swam to a nearby village, where residents rescued him. Later, an officer gave him a token payment of about $ 350, a fraction of his medical losses and expenses.
“Who dares to complain?” he asked. “The answer is nobody.”
Some villagers try to escape conflict, only to be caught in the violence anyway.
In March 2018, U Phoe Shan’s family and other residents were fleeing the fighting in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state. They were going to a camp for displaced people when they met Tatmadaw’s forces on the road.
Phoe Shan, 48, said the soldiers had ordered him to walk in front of a group of about 50 soldiers through a forested area. Fifteen minutes in the forest, he said, he stepped on a mine. He was hospitalized for three weeks with wounds on his legs.
“If we protest, we can be shot,” he said. “It is better to walk in a minefield.”
For the victims of these atrocities, life rarely returns to normal. The loved ones who were taken away never return home. Those who suffer disabling injuries find it difficult to work.
In Shan State, in eastern Myanmar, U Thar Pu Ngwe, 46, who had been pressed into service, was hit in the leg by shrapnel when a soldier stepped on a mine.
He now walks with difficulty and it takes three times as long to go anywhere, he said. He had to reduce the amount of land he cultivates, cutting his income by more than half.
“This incident changed my life,” he said. “I was a happy man, but not after that.”
He asked Tatmadaw to stop using civilians in battle. “If you want to fight,” he said, “just fight on your own.”
Hannah Beech contributed reporting.