MYANMAR: Nearly a year and a half after Myanmar’s democratic government was overcome in a military coup with the Junta installed at the helm of power, the new leaders have returned to primitive and barbaric methods of punishment, including capital punishment.
Recently, the state media reported that Myanmar’s new Junta executed four prisoners, all leading democracy advocates, using capital punishment.
As per the reports, a former lawmaker for the unseated Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party was one of the 4 executed.
As per a June press release by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), they are supposedly the first judicial executions in the country since 1988.
Other victims include former lawyer and hip-hop artist Phyo Zeya Thaw, and another popular democracy advocate Kyaw Min Yu, (aka “Jimmy”), who was found guilty of participating in “brutal and barbaric terror acts”, according to the Myanmar publication Global New Light.
As per the junta’s headstrong campaign to quell any fears of insurrection or dissent from citizens, the military faction has detained anti-coup activists, although none were executed in nearly decades.
The four people who were sentenced to executions were apparently partakers in “terror acts”, according to the military government.
Consequently, they were charged with anti-terrorism laws and the penal code, and the punishment was imposed by legal prison procedures, Reuters has reported.
The junta government’s decision to carry out capital punishments on state dissidents is seen as a cowardly act of brutal murder, by nations worldwide.
Even UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres denounced the decision as “a blatant violation of the right to life, liberty, and security of a person.”
Also Read: China Sends COVID-19 Vaccine Aid To Myanmar Rebel Groups
