Fortify Rights said in a report that four soldiers detained Aung Ko Ko, 37, in Thailand's western Mae Sot district on January 12 for wearing the uniform of an official Thai village security force.
Three of them beat Aung Ko Ko with a long wooden stick while interrogating him, leaving him bruised and bleeding nearby until he died hours later, the rights group said, citing eyewitness accounts, photos of the scene and an autopsy report.
"The horrific torture and killing of Aung Ko Ko cannot be allowed to go unanswered. The soldiers responsible for this should be brought to justice without delay," said Matthew Smith, CEO of Fortify Rights.
Another Myanmar national who witnessed the violence was later convicted of manslaughter over the death, the report said.
Sirachuch, 24, who goes by one name, was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, Fortify Rights said, condemning it as a "miscarriage of justice" that must be put right.
"We believe that Aung Ko Ko's tragic death highlights an ongoing pattern of impunity in Thailand for violence committed against migrants and refugees," the NGO said in a statement.
The army said it was looking into the allegations.
"We are in the process of investigating and looking for the facts, but Thailand has always given priority and give importance to human rights, equally to everybody," army spokesman Major General Thanathip Sawangsang told AFP.
An ongoing conflict in Myanmar, sparked by the military's 2021 coup, regularly sends people rushing across the 2,400-kilometre (1,490-mile) border between the two countries.
Around 90,000 refugees live in nine camps on the heavily patrolled Thai side of the border, according to the United Nations, many having escaped fighting between Myanmar's military and ethnic minority rebel armies.
Thai security forces have been criticised in the past for pushing boatloads of ethnic Rohingya entering Thai waters back out to sea, and for holding migrants in overcrowded facilities.
Thailand, which is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, does not distinguish between refugees and other migrants, and thousands of people live under the radar in the country.
Myanmar ethnic armed group says 11 killed in airstrike on teashop
Bangkok (AFP) Nov 12, 2024 -
Eleven people were killed when a teashop in Myanmar was hit by a military airstrike in the town of Naungcho in the northern Shan state on Tuesday afternoon, a spokeswoman for a local ethnic armed group said.
The attack, shortly before 3 pm (0830 GMT), comes as the junta battles widespread armed opposition to its 2021 coup and its soldiers accused of bloody rampages and using air and artillery strikes to punish civilian communities.
"They were civilians who came to drink tea and were sitting at the shop," Lway Yay Oo, a spokesperson for the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) said.
At least four civilians were wounded and were receiving treatment in a hospital, she said.
Local media also reported that 11 people had died, but said many were injured in an army air attack on Lansan tea shop.
The attack is the latest violation by the junta in recent months of a China-brokered ceasefire signed early this year.
Beijing brokered a truce between the junta and the "Three Brotherhood Alliance" in January after months of fighting that displaced more than half a million people near China's southern border.
The ceasefire allowed the alliance -- made up of the TNLA, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Arakan Army (AA) -- to hold swaths of territory it had seized in northern Shan state.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi's government in 2021 and launched a crackdown that sparked an armed uprising.
Last week junta chief Min Aung Hlaing met with China's Premier Li Qiang in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming where he said that the military was ready for peace if armed groups would engage, according to Myanmar state media.
China has been a major arms supplier to the junta and provided Myanmar with political backing even as other countries shun the generals over their brutal crackdown on dissent.
But Beijing is concerned about the chaos unfolding on its doorstep.
Since last year the military has lost swathes of territory near the border with China in Shan state to an alliance of armed ethnic minority groups and "People's Defence Forces" battling to overturn its coup.
The groups have seized a regional military command and taken control of lucrative border trade crossings, prompting rare public criticism by military supporters of the junta's top leadership.
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