Among the death row inmates were two very well known figures in the fight for democracy. Since 1988, no detainees had been executed.
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The Burmese junta put her sinister threat: four political prisoners, accused of terrorism, whose upcoming death had been announced on June 4, causing a wave of protest, were hanged. “The punishment was imposed according to prison regulations,” the Global New Light of Myanmar, the official daily daily newspaper of the regime, communicated, without giving a specific date. Families were informed by the press and have not yet been able to recover the bodies of the deceased.
Two of the prisoners are among the best known figures in the combat for democracy in Burma: the activist and writer Ko Jimmy, his real name Kyaw Min Yu, 53, was a former student leader in the 1988 uprising. He had already spent more than fifteen years in detention, between 1988 and 2012. The second, the singer of Hip-Hop Zayar Thaw, 41, is the co-founder of the first group of Burmese hip-hop, Acid. Imprisoned from 2008 to 2011 for having carried out a graffiti campaign against the then junta, he had sat as a deputy of the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, from 2012, after the first elections partial which were opened to him, then again from 2016 to 2020.
Arrested at the end of 2021, they had been sentenced in January to have “given directives, made the arrangements and committed conspiracies to [implement] inhuman acts of terror”, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar. Zayar Thaw, in particular, was accused of having orchestrated an attack on a Rangoun train which killed five police officers. The other two prisoners, accused of having murdered an alleged informant, were called Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw.
a “DAY DARLIE”
Burma had not executed prisoner since 1988. However, 68 other persons sentenced to capital punishment since the coup of February 2021 are in prison – 41 others convicted in absentia are on the run or have left the Country, according to the association of Burmese political prisoners . The quadruple execution announced on Monday sparked a wave of protests and insults on Burmese social networks against the putschist soldiers, as well as some sporadic demonstrations. For many Burmese, the event hollows out a little more the feeling of injustice that, according to them, constitutes the nagging inaction of the international community in the face of the civil war which rages in the country.
“Western democratic countries show a significant lack of support for the democratic movement in Myanmar, which embraces the junta regime to be brighter against innocent citizens”, we read in a tweet of the movement of Chin resistance, in the west of the country. The information site in exile The Irrawaddy said that it was a “dark day”, and that the nation was in mourning.
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