Yet another car accident turns to tragedy. Two vehicles are involved in a minor crash. The occupants, two youngsters and two men, have a heated argument on the street. Later, when the youngsters think the episode is behind them and are chatting at a bar, they are shot execution style by the two men and several of their comrades.
This sounds like the kind of news story you hear quite often.
But this one happened in Pegu, a city 50 km north of Rangoon in Burma. According to the state-run media the incident was caused by two young drunks.
According to Burma Partnership, the organisation representing exiled Burmese, the two youngsters, named as Aung Thu Hein, 22, and Soe Paing Zaw, 18, were travelling on a trishaw (a cycle rickshaw) when it collided with a motorbike ridden by two army officers. After the argument, the two officers and some of their associates went looking for the youngsters. They eventually found them and killed them.
In a bid to minimise the consequences of these killings and placate the resentment of friends of the victims, the local authorities offered their families one million kyat (just less than 800 Euros) in exchange for their silence. Perhaps it was due to the fact that they did not accept the pay-out and even protested that the bodies of the two young men were immediately cremated without allowing parents and relatives to say their last goodbyes.
Unfortunately this kind of news story does happen often. In Burma.

A funeral notice for Aung Thu Hein appears in a local newspaper with his picture at top. Authorities denied his family basic rights over the funeral arrangements and officials kept everyone away from the coffins during the proceedings. Photo: Mizzima