The Burmese junta announced on Friday that it would execute four people including a former member of the party of ex-civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a famous pro-democracy activist, the first judicial executions since 1990 in the country.
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Former MP Phyo Zeya Thaw and activist Ko Jimmy, sentenced to death for “terrorism”, “will be hanged in accordance with prison procedures” with two other detainees on an unspecified date, a spokesman for the junta told the power, Zaw Min Tun.
The Burmese junta has sentenced to death dozens of activists mobilized against the coup that brought it to power last year, as part of a fierce crackdown on protests that had followed the putsch, but Burma does not had not executed anyone for over 30 years.
Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was arrested in November and sentenced to death in January under anti-terrorism laws.
A former hip-hop pioneer, his subversive lyrics displeased the former junta and he was imprisoned in 2008.
Elected to parliament for the NLD in 2015, he is accused of having organized several post-coup attacks on regime forces, including an attack on a commuter train in Rangoon in which five policemen were killed. .
The military court pronounced the same sentence against pro-democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu, better known by his nickname “Jimmy”.
Rising to fame during the 1988 student uprisings against the former junta, he was sentenced to death for “inciting rebellion” with his social media posts.
The other two men to be executed allegedly killed a woman they accused of being an informant for the junta.
All “asked to appeal and also submitted a request for the sentence to be commuted, but both appeals were refused,” said the junta’s spokesman.
