New Delhi (Mizzima) – Another Burmese refugee living in Australia has made claims to Australian media that he has committed war crimes.
A 44-year-old Australian citizen named Saw Moon Sah told the Sydney Morning Herald that he killed about 50 people as an undercover Burmese military agent from 1984 to 1987 while he was serving in the Karen National Union (KNU).
An ethnic Karen, Saw Moon Sah said he resigned from the KNU in 1998 and left a refugee camp on Thai-Burma border for Brisbane in 2006 in a third-country resettlement programme.
He said that he served in the KNU as a corporal. The Australia Karen Organization (AKO) told Mizzima that they could not confirm his statements.
“His story is hard to believe. I knew him as a corporal when the 12th Battalion was set up. Then he resigned from our army because he was not happy. Then he lived in the refugee camp,” AKO chairman Saw Lo Li Wah said.
Saw Moon Sah refused to answer questions when contacted by Mizzima.
“I am busy with my family affairs. And I’m busy with consulting with my lawyer on my case,” he said.
He said Australian police would come to interview him on Tuesday about his disclosures.
Another Burmese man, now an Australian citizen, Htoo Htoo Han, claimed to be a former military intelligence officer and made disclosures that he has killed more than two dozen students in the 1988 student demonstrations. He also lives in Brisbane. It is not clear if the two men know each other.
Former military intelligence officers have said that his recent disclosures of committing war crimes were unknown to them.
A former MI officer, Major Aung Lin Htut, who was is a former deputy chief of mission at Burmese embassy in Washington D.C. said, “I worked in MI for over 24 years. What he said was unfounded and baseless. We cannot rule out this is a way to downplay the attempts being made for a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) against war crimes committed by Burmese regimes.”
Htoo Htoo Han told Mizizma in an interview that he was a MI 6 officer with a lieutenant rank during the 1988 uprising and at the same time he worked as a secretary of the Basic Education Student Union.
A former foreign ministry staff member in the Burmese embassy in Cambodia, Sein Lwin, said, “He disclosed these crimes only after getting Australian citizenship. He disclosed his war crimes only when they cannot take action which is dishonest. I think it is a political stunt and cheap propaganda.”
He said Htoo Htoo Han claimed there were nine MI colleagues with him in Australia, but it “is not true.”
