First modification:
Burma’s military junta has executed four opponents, including a former MP from former leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, marking the country’s first use of the death penalty in decades.
With information from Anne Catener for RFI
The execution of four opponents, including a well-known activist for democracy, increases fears that more death sentences will be carried out and has led various human rights organizations to call on the international community to take action. more severe against the military junta.
According to the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, the four dissidents were sentenced to death and executed for leading “brutal and inhumane acts of terror” under “prison procedure.” No details have been given so far of when, nor How were these executions carried out?
After the military junta seized power last year, dozens of anti-coup activists have been sentenced to death as part of its crackdown on dissent. A contestable decision that breaks decades without having carried out executions in that country.
the sentenced
Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, a former MP for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was arrested in November and sentenced to death in January for violating the anti-terrorism law. This Burmese hip hop pioneer, whose lyrics criticized the military since the early 2000s, was arrested in 2008 for belonging to an illegal organization and possession of foreign currency. In 2015 he was a deputy during the transition from military to civilian government.
The junta accused him of having orchestrated several attacks against the regime, including one on a train that killed five policemen last August in Rangoon. For his part, Kyaw Min Yu, known as “Jimmy”, a prominent 53-year-old democracy activist, received the same sentence from the military court. “Jimmy” was a writer and longtime opponent of the military, known for his role in the 1988 student uprising against the military junta at the time. He was arrested in October and sentenced in January.
The other two executed were sentenced to death for the murder of a woman they said was a junta informer in Rangoon.
According to local media, members of the families of Phyo Zeya Thaw and Kyaw Min Yu staged a sit-in outside Insein Prison in Rangoon, hoping to recover their lifeless bodies.
international reaction
“This is another example of the horrific balance of the board in terms of human rights, along with torture, forced disappearances, the use of anti-personnel mines scattered in people’s gardens, it is the return to the death penalty where there was a moratorium since the late 1980s,” Jean-Claude Samouiller, president of Amnesty International France, told RFI.
According to the president of this NGO, there would be about 100 people on death row and that, according to a martial law decree of March 2021, “the judicial power passed from the civil courts to the military courts, with summary procedures , completely illegal and without right of appeal”.
For its part, the United States reacted through its diplomatic representation in Burma. “We condemn the military regime’s execution of pro-democracy leaders and elected officials for exercising their fundamental freedoms.” France, through its spokesman for Foreign Ministries, strongly condemned the executions and estimates that “this is a new stage in a series of atrocities committed by the military junta after the coup in 2021.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the decision, calling it a “flagrant violation of the right to life, liberty and security of persons.” The executions are likely to aggravate the international isolation of the Burmese military, who seized power by force on February 1, 2021 under the pretext of alleged fraud in the previous year’s elections, in which the NLD swept.
Add Comment