A rapper and a writer: Phyo Zeya Thaw and Kyaw Min Yu or Jimmy have each expressed in their own space their opposition to the Burmese military regime, which had to resort to the death penalty to silence them.
Their execution, along with the execution of two other death row inmates, was announced yesterday in Myanmar (Burma), causing an international outcry.
Fio Zeya Thau, from rap to parliament
Fio Zeya Thau was executed at the age of 41. He embodied the new generation of challengers, the young urban Burmese open to international influences.
As a member of the group Acid he was one of the pioneers of rap in the 2000s. From the USA came the huge basketball shorts he wore and the love for subversive lyrics.
“We will never change, we will never give up, we will never surrender,” he sang in one of his tracks that he secretly distributed to avoid junta censorship.
In the 2000s he organized the “Generation Wave” movement, a network of dozens of Burmese artists opposed to the junta. This then cost him imprisonment from 2008 to 2011, for “participation in an illegal organization in possession of foreign currency”.
The wind turned when Burma took, temporarily, the road to democracy. Member of the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, his “heroine”, as he said in an interview after his election as a member of parliament in 2015.
After the coup of February 1, 2021, which closed the short bracket of the democratic transition, Fio Zeya Thaw was arrested in November, accused by the new junta of orchestrating a series of attacks against the security forces. He was sentenced to death in January.
“My son was not a thief, nor a vagabond. I am proud that he gave his life for the country. If I can get his ashes or his remains, I would like to make a grave for him with an inscription on it.” his mother told Radio Free Asia.
Qiao Min Yu, a life of action
Kyaw Min Yew’s route, executed at the age of 53, follows the milestones in the life of 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
The activist became a figurehead in the resistance to the military regime of General Ne Win at the age of 19 during the August 1988 uprising that led to the emergence of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Like her, Kyaw Min Yu, Jimmy, was arrested when the junta regained control of the country. He spent a total of twelve years in prison, in his “second home”, as he called it.
“The government wants to throw them out, but they will always find a way to participate in political life,” he said in 2006, when he was campaigning for the democracy movement while continuing his writing career.
His wife, Nilar Thane, is also an activist. A few months after the birth of his daughter, Jimmy returned to prison in 2007, following the new protest movement that took the name “saffron revolution”.
His wife went to prison a year later. The couple met again in 2012, thanks to an amnesty.
He was arrested in October and sentenced to death for “inciting rebellion” through his social media posts.
His killing is “a shameless murder”, his wife complained to Radio Free Asia. “He will never die in our hearts.”
Source: Capital
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