Myanmar junta escalates terror tactics against its people 

By waging terror tactics including burnings, beheadings, mutilations, torching villages, and through a massive aerial bombing campaign that has displaced nearly three million people, the Myanmar military is attempting to control and divide the population through a long-established doctrine of fear and brutality, witnesses and analysts say. 

CNN has built a timeline of events, using accounts from more than a dozen witnesses, villagers, resistance fighters, family members and analysts, with analysis of the video and pictures from the day using open source techniques. Those accounts and analysis point to the ruling military as being responsible for the killings, in contradiction of their public denials. 

The two young men are bloodied, their feet clamped in wooden stocks. 

“What is the PDF (People’s Defence Force)?” their tormentors yell. “Dogs,” they reply. 

Humiliated and dehumanized, the men are hogtied and dragged across the rough ground by their thick chains. 

In front of dozens of onlookers, they are strung up to a tree and a fire stoked beneath them. 

As smoke rises and the flames consume them, the two men writhe and scream in agony – their final moments of unimaginable pain and horror captured on video. Phoe Tay was 21-years-old, Thar Htaung just 20.

The two young men had left their family farms in northwest Myanmar to join a local armed resistance group following the 2021 military coup, hoping to bring peace and democracy to the Southeast Asian country, their fathers told CNN. 

But they were captured during a battle against the military on November 7 last year, and taken to a nearby village, where they were tortured and killed by a pro-junta militia under the watch of Myanmar army soldiers, according to witnesses. 

Phoe Tay and Thar Htaung’s deaths are horrific, but they are not anomalies in Myanmar, where the military is waging a war of terror against civilians as it finds itself increasingly on the back foot against a nationwide armed resistance determined to oust it from power. 

Those attacks have only increased since a rebel offensive launched five months ago resulted in major losses and defections for the military, multiple sources confirmed. 

United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk recently called the situation “a never-ending nightmare,” where “brutal acts are carried out by trained soldiers against their own people” in a “chilling disregard for human life.” 

CNN has requested comment from Myanmar’s military junta spokesperson about the killings and its attacks on civilians but has not received a response. The military has repeatedly said it does not target civilians and often claims it is resistance forces that commit the violence.