When Tha Peng was ordered to shoot at protesters with his submachine gun to disperse them in the Burmese town of Khampat on Feb. 27, the police lance corporal said he refused.
“The next day, an officer called to ask me if I will shoot,” he said.
The 27-year-old refused again and then resigned from the Myanmar Police Force.
On Monday last week, he said he left his home and family behind in Khampat and traveled for three days, mostly at night to avoid detection, before crossing into India’s northeastern state of Mizoram.
“I had no choice,” Tha Peng told reporter in an interview on Tuesday, speaking via a translator.
He gave only part of his name to protect his identity. Reuters saw his police and national ID cards, which confirmed the name.
Tha Peng said that he and six colleagues disobeyed the Feb. 27 order from a superior officer, whom he did not name.
Reuters could not independently verify his or other accounts gathered near the Myanmar-India border.
The description of events was similar to that given to police in Mizoram by another Burmese police lance corporal and three constables who crossed into India, according to a classified internal Mizoram police document seen by Reuters.
The document was written by police officers, and gives biographical details of the four Burmese and their account of why they fled. It was not addressed to specific people.
“As the Civil disobedience movement is gaining momentum and protest(s) held by anti-coup protesters at different places we are instructed to shoot at the protesters,” the document cites them as saying.
“In such a scenario, we don’t have the guts to shoot at our own people who are peaceful demonstrators,” they said.
Myanmar’s military, which staged a coup on Monday last week and deposed the country’s civilian government, did not respond to request for comment.
The military has said that it is acting with utmost restraint in handling what it has described as demonstrations by “riotous protesters” whom it accuses of attacking police, and harming national security and stability.
Tha Peng’s case is among the first ones reported by the media of police officers fleeing Myanmar after disobeying orders from the military junta’s security forces.
Daily protests against the coup are being staged across the country, and security forces have cracked down.
More than 60 protesters have been killed and more than 1,800 detained, said the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an advocacy group.
Reuters has not been able to confirm the figures independently.
Among the detainees is Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate who led the civilian government.
About 100 Burmese, mostly police officers and their families, have crossed the porous border with India since the protests began, according to a senior Indian official.
Several have taken shelter close to the border, in Mizoram’s Champhai District, where Reuters interviewed three Burmese who said that they had served as police officers.
As well as his identification documents, Tha Peng showed an undated photograph of him wearing a Burmese police uniform.
He said that he joined the force nine years ago.
Tha Peng said that, according to Burmese police rules, protesters should be stopped by rubber bullets or shot below the knees.
Reuters could not verify the police policy.
However, he was given orders by his superiors to “shoot till they are dead,” he added.
Ngun Hlei, who said he was posted as a police constable in the Burmese city of Mandalay, said that he had also received orders to shoot.
He did not give a date, nor specify whether the order was to shoot to kill. He did not give details of any casualties.
The 23-year-old also gave only a part of his full name and carried his national ID card.
Tha Peng and Ngun Hlei said they believed that police were acting under orders from the military. They did not provide evidence.
The other four Myanmar police officers agreed, according to the classified police document.
“The military pressured the police force who are mostly constables to confront the people,” they are cited as saying in the document.
Ngun Hlei said he was reprimanded for disobeying orders and transferred.
He sought help from democracy activists online and found his way by road to Mizoram’s Vaphai village on Saturday last week.
The journey to India cost him about 200,000 kyat (US$141.84), Ngun Hlei said.
Although guarded by Indian paramilitary forces, the India-Myanmar border has a “free movement regime,” which allows people to venture a few kilometers into Indian territory without requiring travel permits.
Twenty-four-year-old Dal said that she had worked as a police constable in the mountainside town of Falam in northwestern Myanmar.
Reuters saw a photograph of her police ID and verified the name.
Her job was mostly administrative, including making lists of people detained by police. However, as protests swelled in the wake of the coup, she said that she was instructed to try to detain female protesters — an order she refused.
Fearing imprisonment for siding with the protesters and the civil disobedience movement, she said that she decided to flee Myanmar.
All three said that there was substantial support for the protesters within the force.
“Inside the police station, 90 percent support the protesters, but there is no leader to unite them,” said Tha Peng, who left behind his wife and two young daughters, one of whom is six months old.
Like some others who have in the past few days crossed the border, the three are scattered around Champhai, supported by local residents.
Saw Htun Win, deputy commissioner of Myanmar’s Falam district close to the border with India, last week wrote to Champhai Deputy Commissioner Maria Zuali, asking for eight police officers who had entered the country to be returned, “in order to uphold friendly relations between the two neighbour countries.”
Zuali confirmed that she had received the letter, a copy of which has been seen by Reuters.
Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga told Reuters that his administration would provide temporary food and shelter to those fleeing Myanmar, but a decision on repatriations was pending with the Indian government in New Delhi.
Tha Peng said that although he missed his family, he feared returning to Myanmar.
“I don’t want to go back,” he said, sitting in a first-floor room overlooking rolling green hills that stretch into Myanmar.
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