Myanmar executions draw outcry
Rights group blasts junta for ‘politically motivated’ trials
Aclose ally of Aung San Suu Kyi who made his name as a rapper in Myanmar has been executed as the military junta killed four democracy activists in the first use of capital punishment in decades.
Phyo Zeya Thaw, founder of the country’s first hip-hop collective, was killed alongside prominent democracy campaigner Kyaw Min Yu, better known as Jimmy.
All four were sentenced to death for helping insurgents fight the army after the country’s generals seized power last February and viciously cracked down on opponents.
The country’s National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow administration formed to resist the coup, immediately condemned the executions and called for international action.
“Extremely saddened . . . condemn the junta’s cruelty,” Kyaw Zaw, the spokesman of the NUG president’s office, told Reuters.
“The global community must punish their cruelty.”
Zeya Thaw shot to national fame in 2000 when he co-founded Acid, a hip-hop group that challenged the country’s conservative culture, appealing to youth living under the
former military dictatorship.
The group was banned and Zeya Thaw was arrested but later released.
Min Yu was an activist who served time in prison as a student protester and later as a democracy activist.
But the coup last year brought with it a much firmer crackdown.
Human Rights Watch said the closed-door trials of the four accused were “grossly unjust and politically motivated” and the “horrific news” had been compounded by the junta’s failure to notify the men’s families.
“The junta’s barbarity and callous disregard for human life aims to chill the anti-coup protest movement,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director. “European Union member states, the United States, and other governments should show the junta that there will be a reckoning for its crimes.”
The two others executed were Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, who were sentenced to death for allegedly killing a military informant.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which monitors arrests and killings by the military, said the executions should be a “wake-up call for diplomats”, revealing that bodies of the men had not been returned to their families.
According to the AAPP, 76 political prisoners have been sentenced to death, as well as 41 other dissidents who are on the run.
Myanmar had previously not carried out an execution since 1988.
The junta was denounced by Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, after it announced its intention to go ahead with the death penalties.
The decision was “a blatant violation to the right to life, liberty and security of person”, he said.
The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a military mouthpiece, said the executions were carried out “under the prison’s procedure” without saying when or how the men were killed.
—