A pro-junta Telegram channel justified an 18 November 2024 junta airstrike on Bangkok internally displaced people (IDP) camp in Pekon Township, Karenni (Kayah) State by claiming that Karenni Resistance fighters had been sheltering there.

This justification was posted on the pro junta Myo Chit Myanmar (A Hmway Sein) Telegram Channel on 18 November. The channel has about 1,400 subscribers and the post has already been viewed by at least 400 people.

But, KIC's fact-checking team reviewed the information and decided that Myo Chit Myanmar’s claims that Karenni resistance force fighters were hiding in Bangkok IDP camp is fake, as outlined below:

The Myo Chit Myanmar post said an airstrike hit a site that: “claims to be the Bangkok IDP camp, but which is actually a hideout used by the Kayan National Army (KNA), the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), and PDF factions operating in the Mobye (Mongpai), Demoso, Inle (Inlay), and Pekon areas."

As ‘proof’ the Myo Chit Myanmar Telegram Channel posted pictures that clearly showed IDP shelters at Bangkok IDP camp that had been destroyed in the airstrike. Myo Chit Myanmar had taken the pictures from the Mobye People’s Defence Force (PDF) Facebook page. It reasoned that because the pictures had been posted on a PDF’s Facebook page it must mean they showed places where PDF members were sheltering, despite this not being mentioned in the accompanying text and the photos not showing any military equipment or defence force fighters.

According to sources in Karenni State the Bangkok IDP camp was hit by three airstrikes on the morning of 18 November when two fighter jets dropped 500-pound and 200-pound bombs onto the camp.

A woman from Loikaw Township in Karenni State said: “From what we understand no armed group has been hiding in the [IDP] camp, only IDPs live there.”

The Union of Karenni State Youth (UKSY), a Karenni youth civil society organisation also reported on its Facebook page that a 45-year-old woman had been killed and several IDP shelters had been destroyed in an unprovoked junta airstrike on Bangkok IDP camp that ”targeted civilians.”

An aid worker helping the IDPs in Bangkok camp wrote on his Facebook page that the dead woman was an IDP living in the camp and that a church had also been destroyed in the airstrikes.

Independent media outlets such as the Kantarawaddy Times and Karenni People's Voice reported on the incident. They quoted witnesses caught up in the airstrikes and they were all IDPs.

KIC’s fact-checking department has established that the claims on the pro junta Myo Chit Myanmar Telegram channel saying that Karenni Resistance fighters were sheltering there are false.