YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar ‘s military junta has executed four opponents, including a former deputy from former leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, marking the country’s first use of the death penalty in decades, state media reported Monday. .
The executions drew widespread condemnation and prompted calls for the international community to take stronger action against the already isolated junta.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said she was “dismayed” by the executions, a measure that she called “cruel and regressive.” “It is a continuation of the current campaign of repression by the military against its own people,” he added in a statement.
The military junta has sentenced dozens of anti-coup activists to death after taking power last year, but Burma had not carried out an execution in decades.
The four opponents, including a prominent democracy activist, were sentenced to death and executed for leading “brutal and inhumane acts of terror,” Myanmar’s state-run Global New Light newspaper reported.
The newspaper said the executions were carried out according to “prison procedure”, without detailing when or how they were carried out.
Following the news, ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyu’s pro-democracy NLD party said it was “devastated”. One of the four executed, Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, was a former lawmaker from their ranks.
The man was arrested in November and sentenced to death in January for violating the anti-terrorism law. Hip hop pioneer in Burma, whose lyrics criticized the army, was arrested in 2008 for belonging to an illegal organization and possession of currency.
He won a seat as a deputy in the 2015 elections, during the transition from military to civilian rule.
Another of those executed is Kyaw Min Yu, known as “Jimmy”. He was a prominent 53-year-old democracy activist and received the same sentence from the military court after being arrested in October and sentenced in January.
He was a writer and opponent known for his role in the 1988 student uprising against the military junta at the time.
“Vague Crimes”
According to local media, members of the families of the first two stood outside the Insein prison in Rangoon, hoping to recover their lifeless bodies.
The other two were sentenced to death for the murder of a woman they said was a junta informer in Rangoon.
The junta was heavily criticized by international powers when it announced its intention to carry out the executions last month.
The last capital execution in Burma dates back to 1988, according to a UN expert report from June, which counted 114 death sentences since the coup.
The experts stressed that martial law gave the military the possibility of pronouncing the death penalty for 23 “vague and broadly defined crimes” and, in practice, for any criticism of power.
They warned that the executions could be accelerated if the international community did not react.
“wicked acts”
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.
“These evil acts must mark a turning point for the international community. The status quo of international inaction must be firmly rejected,” Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, reacted on Twitter.
The executions have been condemned by the United States, Japan and France, which described a “new stage in the escalation of atrocities”.
For his part, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said that the decision was a “flagrant violation of the right to life, liberty and security of persons.”
The director for Asia of the NGO Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson, asked the international community “to show the board that there will be accountability for its crimes.”
According to a local NGO, more than 2,000 civilians have been killed and more than 15,000 detained since the coup.
Among those arrested is Aung San Suu Kyi, a 77-year-old former leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who faces various charges that can total up to 150 years in prison.
