National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker U Kyaw Myo Min, who was detained by a Myanmar military detachment in June along with two other party members, was found dead near a village in Mon State’s Bilin Township on Wednesday. The two party members were found dead last week.
U Kyaw Myo Min, 55, the NLD chair for Bilin Township, was elected to the Mon State parliament in the 2020 general election.
An official of the Thaton People’s Defense Force (TPDF), whose members discovered the lawmaker’s body, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that U Kyaw Myo Min was tortured to death, as wounds were found on his face and legs.
With a rope around his neck and his hands tied behind his back, U Kyaw Myo Min’s body was covered with bushes in a drain near where the bodies of the two slain NLD members with whom the lawmaker was detained were discovered. No gunshot or stab wounds were found on his body, the TPDF official said.
On Saturday, NLD members U Pan Myint, 55, and U Ko Ko Maung, 52, who were detained alongside the party lawmaker on June 22, were found dead in the same area.
They had also been brutally tortured before being executed, according to the spokesperson of the Karen National Liberation Army’s Brigade 1 based in Mon State’s Thaton District.
U Kyaw Myo Min was in charge of the Information Department of the Partnership Oversight Committee of KNU/KNLA Brigade 1, according to the TPDF official.
“He [the lawmaker] should have been treated in accordance with the rights of prisoners of war. But he was tortured to death inhumanely. So, we want the international community to know the Myanmar military junta is a terrorist group,” the TPDF official said.
The NLD said in May that a total of 917 party members had been arrested since Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing staged a coup on Feb.1 last year and scrapped the result of the 2020 election, in which the NLD won a landslide victory.
Of those detained, 701 NLD members including party leaders and 98 elected lawmakers are still in custody.
So far 18 NLD members including a lawmaker have died in the regime’s custody due as a result of torture or being denied sufficient healthcare.
As of Wednesday, 2,068 people had been killed by regime forces while 14,502 people including elected government leaders have been arrested or detained by the junta since the coup, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said.
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