Top Myanmar lawyer gunned down

YANGON: A prominent lawyer and member of Myanmar’s ruling party was shot dead along with a taxi driver outside Yangon’s international airport on Sunday, officials said.

Ko Ni (pictured), 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 5 pm 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 said, asking not to be named. “An unknown man shot him in the head while he was hiring a taxi. He was later arrested,” the source added.

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 possible murder. were no motives reports behind on the

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 antisentiment, 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.

In late 2015 Suu Kyi’s NLD party won a landslide election victory, ending decades of military led rule.

But in what analysts widely saw as a sop to Buddhist hardliners the party fielded no Muslim candidates, despite boasting many prominent figures in its ranks.