The soldiers from the army of Myanmar knocked on Thein Aung’s door one morning last year when he was having tea with friends, and demanded that they all accompany the platoon to another town.
When they reached a dangerous stretch in the mountains of Rakhine state, the men were ordered to walk 100 feet ahead. One stepped on a landmine and was blown to pieces. Metal fragments Mr. Thein hit Aung in his arm and his left eye.
“They threatened to kill us if we refused to go with them,” he said. Thein Aung, 65, who lost his eye, said. “It is very clear that they used us as human landmine detectives.”
The military and its brutal practices are a widespread fear in Myanmar, which has increased since the generals seized full power in a coup last month. As security forces break down peaceful protesters in the city’s streets, the violence prevalent in the countryside serves as a gruesome reminder of the army’s long legacy of atrocities.
During decades of military rule, a Bamar-dominated army acted with impunity against ethnic minorities, killing civilians and burning down villages. The violence continued, even though the military ceded some authority to an elected government in a power-sharing arrangement that began in 2016.
The following year, the military expelled more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from the country, an ethnic cleansing campaign that a panel of the United Nations described as genocide. Soldiers fought rebellious armies with the same ruthlessness, using men and boys as human shields on the battlefield and raping women and girls in their homes.
The generals are now at the helm of affairs again and the Tatmadaw, as the army is known, aimed its guns at the masses who set up a nationwide civil disobedience movement.
The crackdown escalated Monday in the wake of a general strike, with security forces taking control of universities and hospitals and declaring press licenses from five media organizations null and void. At least three protesters were shot dead.
More than 60 people have been killed since the February 1 coup, an increasingly bloody repression reminiscent of the fact that the military has suppressed pro-democracy in the past.
“It’s an army with a heart of darkness,” said David Scott Mathieson, an independent analyst who has long studied the army’s practice. “It’s an unrepentant institution.”
Brutality is ingrained in the Tatmadaw. It came to power in 1962 and said it had to protect national unity. For decades, he fought to control parts of the country, inhabited by ethnic minority groups, rich in jade, timber and other natural resources.
For the past three years, the Tatmadaw have occasionally waged war against ethnic rebel armies in three states, Rakhine, Shan, and Kachin. The fiercest fighting was in Rakhine, where the Arakan army, an ethnic Rakhine force, is seeking greater autonomy.
In this protracted conflict, citizens are often victims, as 15 victims, family members, or witnesses in these three states testify in interviews with The New York Times.
Six men described how they were injured by landmines or gunfire when soldiers forced them to risk their lives. Several women say they were raped by soldiers, while other men and boys remember never returning after soldiers took them away.
The Times linked the victims through local rights groups who documented their accounts, went to the venues, questioned witnesses and broadly confirmed the events. Law groups also reported on these common practices.
An army spokesman declined to comment.
The people who spoke to The Times outlined a pattern of abuse in which soldiers forced civilians to serve as porters under the threat of death. Men and boys were ordered to walk in front of the soldiers in conflict zones, often used as human shields.
In October, Sayedul Amin, a 28-year-old Rohingya man, was fishing in a dam near his town, Lambarbill, in the state of Rakhine when about 100 soldiers arrived. He said they took 14 men, including him, along to carry bags of rice and other food. Several who refused were badly beaten.
“We were ordered to walk in front of the soldiers,” he said. “It seems like they wanted us to protect them if someone attacked.”
They walked less than an hour when the shooting began, he said. He never saw who shot at them. He was hit by two bullets. A 10-year-old and an 18-year-old were killed in front of him, shot in the face and head so many times that it was difficult to recognize.
According to him, the soldiers left the bodies for the villagers to bury.
The Tatmadaw have forced at least 200 men and boys in the state of Rakhine over the past three years to serve as battlefield guards and human shields, according to U Than Hla, a member of the board of directors of Arakan CSO Network, a human rights coalition. Of those taken, 30 are known to have died and at least 70 are missing. Half were under 18.
Human rights groups say such practices have long been present in Kachin and Shan states. But there is no similar data there from the same period.
Women face their own horrors. While sexual violence by the Tatmadaw is often unreported, rape was systematic and widespread during the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch found. The same fate befell women of other ethnic groups in conflict areas.
“The military in Myanmar is violating human rights in many ways,” said Zaw Zaw Min, founder of the Rakhine Human Rights Group. “Women are raped, villages are burned down, property is taken and people are taken as porters.”
In June, when soldiers arrived in U Gar town in Rakhine state, Daw Oo Htay Win, 37, said she was hiding in her home with her four children and newborn granddaughter. That evening, the crying of the baby betrayed their presence to four soldiers who entered the house. They gave her the choice: have sex with them or die. For the next two hours, three soldiers raped her while the fourth guard was on duty.
Me. Oo Htay Win, her daughters and the baby slip out the back door that morning and take refuge in the town of Sittwe, where she now lives. She said her husband, who was away, let her down after she learned of the rape.
Although most victims of rape by soldiers remain silent, she has filed criminal charges. After the soldiers confessed, they were tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years.
“I hate these three soldiers because they destroyed my life,” she said. “I lost everything because of them.”
The convictions were a rare victory in a country where citizens are rarely held accountable. And few victims receive compensation, even if they incur permanent injuries and huge financial losses. If they do, it is minimal.
In the western part of the state of Rakhine, where river travel is common, the Tatmadaw often command private boats to transport troops and supplies. In March of 2019, U Maung Phyu Hla (43), a boat owner of the Mrauk-U township, said soldiers forced him to take up troops against the Lay Myo River to fight the Arakan army.
On the seventh ride upstream, they came under big shot. Shot in the thigh, Mr. Maung Phyu Hla said he slipped into the water and swam to a nearby village, where residents rescued him. Later, an officer gave him an amount of about $ 350, a fraction of his losses and medical expenses.
“Who dares to complain?” he asked. “The answer is nobody.”
Some villagers try to escape the conflict, but to get caught up in violence anyway.
In March 2018, U Phoe Shan’s family and other villagers flee fighting in Kachin State in northern Myanmar. They were on their way to a camp for displaced people when they encountered Tatmadaw forces on the way.
Mr. Phoe Shan, 48, said the soldiers ordered him to walk through a wooded area at the head of a group of about 50 troops. Fifteen minutes into the woods, he said, he stepped on a mine. He was hospitalized for three weeks with wounds to his legs.
“If we protest, we could be shot dead,” he said. “It’s better to walk through a minefield.”
For the victims of these atrocities, life rarely becomes normal. Loved ones who have been taken away never return home. Those who suffer crippling injuries find it difficult to work.
In the Shan state in eastern Myanmar, U Thar Pu Ngwe, 46, who was pressed into service, was struck in the leg by shrapnel when a soldier stepped on a mine.
He walks hard now, and it takes him three times as long to get anywhere, he said. He had to reduce the amount of land he farmed and reduce his income by more than half.
“That incident changed my life,” he said. “I was a happy man, but not anymore.”
He urged the Tatmadaw to stop using civilians in battle. “If you want to fight,” he said, “just do it on your own.”
Hannah Beech reported.