Myanmar ethnic armed group sentences man to death in public trial

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An ethnic Myanmar armed group has sentenced a man to death for murder after a public trial in a city recently captured by the junta, media close to the group reported.

United Wa State Army (UWSA) officials convicted the man of murdering an eight-year-old girl, Wa News Land said on Wednesday.

The girl was killed in August during a grocery store robbery in the town of Hopang, Shan State, and authorities arrested the man two months later, the post said.

The UWSA is the best-equipped of about a dozen ethnic armed groups in Myanmar and has close ties with China, which analysts say supplies much of its weapons.

It operates a semi-autonomous enclave on the border with China's Yunnan province that uses the Chinese currency Yuan and gets its electricity and internet from Chinese providers.

The group took control of Hopang in January after an allied ethnic armed group captured and handed over the area from the military.

At the public trial at a “cultural park” in the city, six other people were sentenced to life imprisonment or long prison terms, Wa News Land said, without naming their crimes.

“The death penalty will be imposed, but we would not execute him publicly,” a justice official told the media.

Many of Myanmar's ethnic armed groups operate parallel legal systems in the areas they control along the country's borders.

In April, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) executed three of its employees for murder and selling weapons and ammunition stolen from the group.

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