Myanmar anti-junta poet dies in custody
As Myanmar nears 100 days of the military coup, poet Khet Thi, whose works declare resistance to the ruling junta, died in detention overnight and his body was returned with the organs removed, his family said on Sunday.
A spokesman for the junta did not answer calls to request comment on the death of Khet Thi, who had penned the line “They shoot in the head, but they don’t know the revolution is in the heart”.
Khet Thi’s wife said both of them were taken for interrogation on Saturday by armed soldiers and police in the central town of Shwebo, in the Sagaing region - a centre of resistance to the coup in which elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted.
“I was interrogated. So was he. They said he was at the interrogation centre. But he didn’t come back, only his body,” his wife Chaw Su told BBC Burmese language news in tears from
Monywa, around 100km away by road.
“They called me in the morning and told me to meet him at the hospital in Monywa. I thought it was just for a broken arm or something ... But when I arrived here, he was at the morgue and his internal organs were taken out,” she said.
She did not say how she knew her husband’s organs had been removed. She had been told at the hospital he had a heart problem, but had not bothered to read the death certificate because she was sure it would not be true, Chaw Su said. Reuters was unable to reach the hospital for comment.
“He died at the hospital after being tortured in the interrogation centre,” the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group said in a bulletin that put the toll of civilians killed since the coup at 780.
On Tuesday, 100 days will have passed since the generals made their lightning power grab in the early morning of February 1 and detained Suu Kyi.