Ousted Mandalay municipal minister and mayor Dr. Ye Lwin has been hospitalized after falling sick with suspected gastrointestinal problems in Mandalay’s Obo Prison.
Dr. Ye Lwin was transferred from the Obo Prison hospital to Mandalay General Hospital on February 4.
“We were told that he is suspected to have gastrointestinal problems and a diagnosis will be conducted by a physician. The result is still unknown,” said a member of his legal team.
Dr. Ye Lwin was detained following the Myanmar military’s coup in February last year. In December, he was sentenced by a junta court to two years in jail, the maximum sentence for a violation of Penal Code 505(b), for inciting civil servants and municipal workers to join the Civil Disobedience Movement.
A medical doctor who trained as an eye specialist, Dr. Ye Lwin is a respected figure in Mandalay. After the National League for Democracy Party won the 2015 general election, he was nominated by Mandalay Region chief minister Dr. Zaw Myint Maung as the mayor and municipal minister of Myanmar’s second city.
He enjoys huge popularity among residents as the architect of Mandalay’s transformation into a smart city. He rejected the military regime’s offer to join its administration, and was thus imprisoned.
Under Dr. Ye Lwin’s leadership, Mandalay was ranked in 2018 by CIO-Asia as fifth among the top 10 cities in Southeast Asia in the process of becoming “smart cities,” a ranking based on information from the ASEAN Post, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the network’s own project profiles and Govlnsider.
Mandalay also won the Smart City 2019 award given by the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization, a federation of information and communications technology industry associations in the Asia and Oceania region.
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