Top Myanmar lawyer assassinated
> Myanmar ruling party says Muslim member’s murder political
YANGON: The killing of a top Muslim lawyer and adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi who was gunned down outside Yangon airport was a political assassination and a “terrorist act”, Myanmar’s ruling party said yesterday.
Ko Ni ( pix), a legal adviser to the National League for Democracy, was shot in the head on Sunday afternoon as he waited outside the airport while holding his grandson.
A dramatic photo circulating on social media showed the moment the gunman, standing behind him, took aim.
Police have not said what prompted the killing.
But Ko Ni was a prominent Muslim figure who spoke out against the antiIslamic sentiments of Buddhist hardliners and criticised the powerful military’s grip on power.
A taxi driver who tried to stop the gunman was also shot dead before the unidentified attacker was arrested.
Ko Ni had just returned from a government delegation visit to Indonesia where regional leaders were discussing sectarian tensions in Rakhine state.
Myanmar’s army has waged a crackdown on the mainly Muslim Rohingya community which has prompted tens of thousands of them to flee the state.
Ko Ni had previously criticised religious laws pushed by Buddhist nationalists.
In a statement the NLD described him as a key aide to de facto civilian leader Suu Kyi, saying he was “irreplaceable”.
“We strongly denounce the assassination of Ko Ni like this as it is a terrorist act against the NLD’s policies,” the statement said.
The 63-year-old was a veteran member of the party which doggedly resisted decades of military rule to sweep the 2015 elections that brought Suu Kyi to power.
Ko Ni’s daughter Yin Nwe Khaing said she brought her young son to greet his grandfather at the airport, adding her father had made enemies because he had been a prominent Muslim voice.
“As we are from a different religion there were many people who didn’t like and hated it. I think that also could be a reason (for his murder),” she told DVB TV outside the hospital where her father’s body had been taken.
Senior NLD leaders, including party patron Tin Oo, met visibly distraught relatives at Ko Ni’s Yangon home yesterday morning before a planned funeral later in the day.
“Losing that kind of person is great loss for the country, for democratic forces and for us (the party),” Tin Oo said, describing the killing as an “assassination”. – AFP