A village official in Kachin State’s Hpakant Township was gunned down in her home by unknown assailants on Sunday.
Nandar Hlaing, 40, the administrator of Mawshan village, was shot in front of her children around 5:30pm on 22 May by three men who arrived at her house disguised as local villagers looking to report a bike theft, according to Shwe Thein, the local chairman of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Seikmu village-tract, where Mawshan is located.
“She was spending time with her two sons at her home when the assailants showed up around 5:30pm. One of them came into the house first and claimed he wanted to report a bike theft, so she was speaking to him when the two others came and shot her,” said Shwe Thein.
“One of her sons, who is ten years old, was the only one who saw the assailants. Her husband was sleeping upstairs as he was ill. He immediately took her to hospital soon after the incident but she succumbed to her injuries on the way.”
Nandar Hlaing sustained six gunshot wounds — four in her chest, one in her arm and another in her shoulder. A native of Rangoon, she only recently arrived in Hpakant when she was appointed to the position of village administrator. She was also an active in social work, said the NLD official.
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Khin Maung Myint, an MP in the parliament upper house’s Mineral, Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation Committee, told DVB that the victim, early on the day of her assassination, was seen complaining about the administrator of the Seikmu village-tract.
“We saw her that day at the administrator’s office in Seikmu — she complained to us about this feud between local village officials and how the village-tract’s administrator U Tu Mai was not making enough effort to solve it,” said Khin Maung Myint.
“In the light of what she said, we told U Tu Mai to meet the local officials on the ground to resolve the issue. The victim was there to complain about it. I don’t know what happened afterwards.”
The police and government officials in Hpakant were unavailable for comment.
