Police watch over the Myanmar International Convention Centre in Nay Pyi Taw on August 30, 2016. (AFP)

Ayeyarwady vice: Law and disorder in the Delta

Life in Ayeyarwady Region is low risk, high reward for the junta’s corrupt police officers, but they live in fear of being transferred to a conflict zone to replenish the Myanmar military’s dwindling ranks.

By FRONTIER

“Have you heard of the proverb ‘The tiger who moves to another forest courts death’?”

The Burmese expression warns that leaving home is dangerous, but for junior police officer Ko Myat Ko, it’s returning home that has him worried.

After completing training in 2017, Myat Ko, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, was assigned to the Myanmar Police Force headquarters in the heavily fortified capital Nay Pyi Taw. There he became a favourite protégé of his colonel, whom he still affectionately refers to as aba, a respectful term for a male elder, commonly used to refer to senior military or police officers. But around one year after the 2021 military coup, he requested a transfer back to his hometown in Ayeyarwady Region’s Maubin Township – a decision he now regrets.

“I never thought the ethnic armed groups would become powerful enough to create the war we’re experiencing today,” the 26-year-old told Frontier. “I moved back to Ayeyarwady with the help of my aba. If I had known the fire of war would burn across the country and our side would be losing, I would never have left the safety of the Nay Pyi Taw headquarters. I would have stayed under the wing of aba.

But while the Ayeyarwady delta region is less secure than the capital, it remains stable and under firm military control, even as fighting rages across other states and regions. Police officers lucky enough to serve in Ayeyarwady have ample opportunities for bribery, while remaining relatively safe from conflict or assassination. But a shadow of fear lingers, because they can be sent elsewhere at any moment.

The military has lost huge swathes of territory in the country’s borderlands, particularly since late October last year, when the Three Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed groups launched a stunning offensive in northern Shan, Rakhine and southern Chin states.

Overstretched on the battlefield and facing unprecedented losses, the regime activated a mandatory conscription law in February, and another law allowing it to recall veterans of the armed forces. While it hasn’t announced it publicly, Frontier’s interviews with multiple police officers in Ayeyarwady reveal that the regime is also transferring police from stable regions to conflict zones.

Myat Ko said four officers from the Maubin District Police Station have been transferred and then killed in the fighting – three who were sent to Rakhine’s Maungdaw Township in 2022 died in January and February this year, and one was killed in Chin’s Tonzang Township in May.

Like pawns on a chessboard

With the police force understaffed, Myat Ko is regularly moved around Ayeyarwady. In June, he was temporarily transferred from a small police garrison in his native village tract in Danubyu Township to the Maubin District Police Station in order to supplement the small force there.

“The chiefs don’t dare refuse when a district-level police station asks for manpower from the lower levels. They send somebody right away,” he said. “The chiefs then give more favours to the staff who are willing to relocate, like me. I don’t do it because I want to, but because I don’t want negative attention.”

Myat Ko said he’s served multiple stints at the Maubin station, usually between one and six months, before returning to his small village.

“The station chiefs have lists of who is on their good side and who is on their bad side. The bad ones can be sent to rough places, so the relationship with our senior officers is very important to us.”

One out of favour police sergeant, who is scheduled to retire in 2025, received a transfer notification suddenly in February. He was ordered to move from Danubyu, where he had lived with his family for more than 20 years, to eastern Shan’s Kengtung Township, where the military’s Triangle Command is headquartered.

While Kengtung has remained relatively quiet, it’s surrounded by territory controlled by some of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed groups, including the United Wa State Army and National Democratic Alliance Army.

“No one wants to move when they just have a year left to get their pension. Once I heard my name was on the list, I went to meet the township and regional police chiefs to get it removed,” the sergeant said, explaining he paid nearly K3 million (about US$630 at the market rate) to prevent the transfer.

Other police officers in Ayeyarwady have intentionally stopped taking exams or applying for promotions, because they fear they will be transferred to conflict zones if they achieve a higher rank.

“Our police chief moved here just before the coup, but he’s originally from Kayah State,” said the sergeant. Resistance groups led by the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force have seized huge swathes of Kayah, even coming close to taking the state capital Loikaw in recent months.

“He bought land and is building a home in the village to reside here permanently. He’s trying at all costs not to be transferred. He blamed the resistance movement for blocking his career path, because he’s scared he would be sent to a conflict zone if he tries to get a promotion.”

Frontier has also viewed Facebook groups organised by police families, where concerned loved ones ask for information or air grievances over losing contact with relatives after they were transferred to conflict zones.

But if one can avoid a transfer, Ayeyarwady remains a plum assignment with limited risk and ample opportunity for reward.

“There’s very little PDF activity here,” said Ko Lwin Gyi, the nickname of a police officer serving at a village tract police station in Maubin, referring to post-coup militias commonly known as People’s Defence Forces.

“There are a few cases of assassinations [in Ayeyarwady] but it’s less than in other regions and states. The police don’t want to move from here because they are in a position where they can work peacefully.”

Police patrol a street in Yangon on July 19, 2023. (AFP)

On the take

While some officers are paying bribes to avoid transfers, or to be relocated to Nay Pyi Taw, others are taking advantage of the bribe paradise of Ayeyarwady.

Lwin Gyi said he takes kickbacks because he can’t afford to feed his family on his salary, which adds up to about K248,000 a month, including food allowances and hardship bonuses.

“When a bag of rice costs nearly K200,000, my salary is not enough for my family,” he said, explaining that he provides for his parents and two sisters, one of whom is chronically ill while the other is a full-time university student.

He primarily supplements his income by taking payments from illicit businesses. These are called ye kyay, or police fee, and typically add up to more than his salary – as much as K700,000 in a good month.

Ye kyay is nothing new. Even under the elected National League for Democracy government, deposed in the 2021 coup, this kind of petty bribery remained rampant, partially because the police were outside of civilian oversight.

Ko Wai Lin, a former police lieutenant who joined the mass strike of civil servants known as the Civil Disobedience Movement just after the coup, told Frontier the main problems are insufficient salaries and the normalisation of corruption.

“When corruption becomes a tradition, there are some police who don’t want to do it but they have to accept it because everyone else does,” said Wai Lin, now a spokesperson for the People’s Police Force under the National Unity Government, a parallel cabinet appointed by elected lawmakers deposed in the coup.

“Most of them do it gladly, but I always hated this situation. I was even more upset after the coup, so I joined the CDM. The conditions for bribery are now far worse than before, due to lax regulation and economic hardship.”

Lwin Gyi agreed that kickbacks have soared since the coup, because the economy has tanked while illegal businesses including gambling are booming. He said he and his colleagues regularly collect money from illegal lottery bookkeepers, but the money isn’t shared equally.

“For example, if we collect K100,000 in a day, the chief takes K30,000, the police lieutenant takes K20,000, and the five ordinary police officers get K10,000 each,” he explained.

There are other opportunities for even bigger, but less regular paydays, like travelling gambling dens visiting town for three or four days. Known as arwarday, these gambling festivals include traditional games like lay kong jin or galok-galok, as covered in a previous Frontier feature about increased illegal gambling since the coup.

A resident of Hinthada Township who worked for one of these mobile gambling dens told Frontier that the first task upon entering a village is to negotiate the bribe at the nearest police station.

“The dens have to pay at least K300,000 per day while they are holding the gambling festival. You know what? They [the police officers] even visit the dens in plainclothes, and provide security to prevent any fights between gamblers,” he said.

The back door

Despite this rampant corruption, not everyone can afford to bribe their way out of a dangerous transfer. Another option is to desert their post or defect to the resistance. Some 8,000 police and soldiers defected in the first year after the coup, but that stream slowed to a trickle in subsequent years.

People’s Embrace, an organisation that helps security force members to defect, said the number has ticked up again since the Brotherhood’s offensive in October, but did not share exact figures. The group said it’s currently in touch with around 60 police and soldiers trying to escape their bases into opposition-controlled territory.

But while resistance groups continue to help them, many view defectors with suspicion, particularly if they flee their post for the sake of self-preservation. Participants in the CDM often resent their regime counterparts, calling for various punishments for those who continue providing public services – and even underage students who go to public schools run by the regime.

Captain Lin Htet Aung, spokesperson for People’s Embrace, said the newcomers should not be seen as CDM participants, but as surrendering troops.

“We welcome them because it can weaken the enemy,” he added.

A member of an undercover team helping security forces defect agreed.

“They are leaving to join us only because they are afraid of being killed in battle,” he said. “They take advantage when they are assigned to peaceful places, but they contact us to save them once they get transferred to dangerous places. The percentage of this kind of defection is becoming larger than those who really believe in the revolution. We have to accept them even though we don’t want to.”

Wai Lin said the regime has also relaxed requirements for new police officers in a bid to replenish the ranks. Before the coup, new officers had to have a Grade 8 education or higher, be between 18 and 30 years old, and have no tattoos. They would spend six months in one of four basic training schools, each taking only two or three batches per year each and producing about 300 constables per batch.

But now, Lwin Gyi said the training schools take students with an education as low as Grade 4, as young as 16 or as old as 35, and no longer care about tattoos. While the training programmes are still six months, he claimed they are running continuously, so trainees can join at any time instead of waiting for a new batch.

The father of a 23-year-old man living in Kyonpyaw Township was convinced by his village tract police chief to have his son join the police, rather than risk being conscripted into the military.

“He has been attending the Taung Lay Lone training school in Taunggyi Township in Shan State for the last two months,” he said on July 1. “The police chief said he will try to make sure my son gets posted in our region once he completes the training.”

But Lwin Gyi said there’s no guarantee he will be assigned there, because lower-level police officers are generally sent wherever they’re needed – unless they can bribe their way out. Meanwhile, mid-level police officers, like the village tract chief, get benefits from their superiors for recruiting new members.

Wai Lin said the resistance has little sympathy for people who join the police force at this time.

“We can understand people who were police before the coup, because they didn’t know what would happen, or because of various family situations. But we can’t extend that kind of understanding to newcomers. They will have to pay for their choice,” he said.

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