Capital punishment returns to Myanmar

Four democracy activists have been executed in Myanmar after being accused by the country’s military of committing “terror acts”.

Two of the men were well-known public figures: Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former hip-hop star who became a lawmaker in deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, and veteran pro-democracy activist Ko Jimmy, whose real name was Kyaw Min Yu.

“Less is known about the two other activists” Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, said the BBC. The pair were convicted last year for killing a woman who was allegedly a junta informant.

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The four men were given death sentences during “secretive trials in January and April”, Reuters reported, after being accused of helping the civilian resistance movement. Zeya Thaw and Min Yu lost appeals against their convictions last month. Al Jazeera reported that the men had been hanged.

The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported on Monday that the men had been killed due because they “gave directives, made arrangements and committed conspiracies for brutal and inhumane terror acts”.

Though Suu Kyi has not made a public statement, a source told BBC’s Burmese Service that the detained leader was “very sad after hearing the news”.

‘Shock and revulsion’

The military ousted the democratically-elected NLD and seized power in a coup in February last year, and it has since “unleashed a campaign of brutal violence to suppress opposition” as the country has descended into civil war, said The Guardian.

Capital punishment is legal in Myanmar, but the last known execution to have taken place prior to these killings was in 1988, according to the United Nations. Executions had previously been carried out by hanging, said Al Jazeera, and the first incidents of the death penalty for some decades have drawn “shock and revulsion”, said The Guardian.

In a global assessment of capital punishment published in 2018, Amnesty International identified Myanmar as one of 28 countries that are “abolitionist in practice”, meaning that the death penalty was still enshrined in law but no executions had been conducted during the previous ten years.

On Monday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, called for the release of all political prisoners, “and urged the country to reinstate its de-facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty, as a step towards eventual abolition”. Bachelet described the killings as “cruel violations of the rights to life, liberty and security of a person, and fair trial guarantees”.

The Irrawaddy reported on Tuesday that Ko Hla Htoo, a 45-year-old sofa manufacturer and member of the NLD “was tortured to death at a military interrogation centre” last weekend, making him the second member of the party to be killed by the regime in the past week.

Politician U Bo Bo Oo told the news site that members of the NLD and executive committee members “are being hunted or killed” by the military. “The situation has become worse in the last three months,” he said.

‘An enormous setback’

Amnesty’s regional director, Erwin van der Borght, said: “The international community must act immediately as more than 100 people are believed to be on death row after being convicted in similar proceedings.”

Officials across the world have condemned the executions. The European Union, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, the UK and the US published a joint statement describing the executions as “reprehensible acts of violence that further exemplify the regime's disregard for human rights and the rule of law”.

Amnesty International’s death penalty adviser, Chiara Sangiorgio, described the killings as “an enormous setback” and warned that the junta is “not going to stop there”.

US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, said that “there can be no business as usual with this regime”. He called on countries to “do more” and “refrain from lending the regime any degree of international credibility”.

Price also “spotlighted” Beijing, said The Washington Post, adding: “Arguably, no country has the potential to influence the trajectory of Burma’s next steps more so” than China.

China’s foreign ministry “urged all parties in Myanmar to properly resolve conflicts within its constitutional framework”, Reuters reported.