Top lawyer shot dead at airport in Myanmar

A PROMINENT Muslim lawyer and member of Myanmar’s ruling party was shot dead along with a taxi driver outside Yangon’s international airport yesterday, officials said.

Ko Ni, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, was gunned down as he got into a taxi outside arrivals around 5pm by an assassin who also killed the driver.

“According to our initial information, Ko Ni and the taxi driver were killed,” a security source at the airport told AFP, asking not to be named. “An unknown man shot him in the head while he was hiring a taxi. He was later arrested.”

Zaw Htay, a spokesman at the president’s office, said Ko Ni had just returned from a government delegation trip to Indonesia.

“He [Ko Ni] was shot while he was waiting for a car outside the airport. Ko Ni died on the spot,” he said.

There were no reports on possible motives behind the murder.

Myanmar’s border regions have simmered for decades with ethnic minority insurgencies.Yet it is rare for prominent political figures to be murdered in Yangon, the country’s booming and largely safe commercial hub.

But in recent years Myanmar has witnessed a surge of antiMuslim sentiment, fanned by hardline Buddhist nationalists.

Ko Ni, a long time member of the NLD and legal adviser to the party, often spoke out in favour of religious tolerance and pluralism.

Suu Kyi has also faced international censure for her failure to criticise an ongoing army crackdown against the Muslim Rohingya minority in western Rakhine state.