[ Myanmar Now ] Military gives cash to families of assassinated Yangon administrators
The donations come after the junta admitted it cannot properly protect its own officials
The junta has given cash donations to the families of local administrators who were among those assassinated for working with the regime in recent weeks, state-run newspapers reported over the weekend.
Lieutenant General Soe Htut, the military council’s minister of home affairs, gave payments of 500,000 kyat each to seven families at a meeting in Yangon on Friday, the reports said.
The general invited local officials from across Yangon Region to the meeting, which was called following a series of deadly attacks on ward administrators and other pro-junta officials in Yangon and elsewhere.
Several ward administrators have resigned in the wake of the killings.
“It was nothing special,” an administrator who attended the meeting told Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity. “We were just told to take care of ourselves, and that there would be security deployed.”
Another administrator said he and other officials were unable to implement all of the orders they were given by the junta and that they had to make sure they could coexist with residents.
Some 30 administrators were killed between March and early June, according to figures compiled from media reports.
The assassinations have mostly targeted officials and members of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) who were accused of acting as informants for the junta.