Senior Myanmar pro-democracy politician dies in custody at 73
Zaw Myint Maung, NLD vice chairman and Mandalay chief minister, had been suffering from cancer.
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Zaw Myint Maung, a deputy leader of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, or NLD, died of cancer on Monday, the latest member of Myanmar’s embattled democracy movement to die in detention of the junta that ousted their government in 2021.
Zaw Myint Maung, 73, was an NLD vice chairman and chief minister of the Mandalay region before the 2021 coup. He had recently been transferred from Mandalay’s Obo Prison to Mandalay General Hospital, where he died, sources close to his family said.
“We have lost an important person for our party and for the country,” NLD Deputy Chairman Bo Bo Oo told Radio Free Asia, speaking from an undisclosed location.
“I would like to request that our party leaders and people who have been unjustly arrested be released as soon as possible to prevent such losses from happening without proper medical treatment in prisons.”
A top NLD official and adviser to Suu Kyi, Nyan Win, died from COVID-19 in prison in 2021. A year later, the junta executed former NLD lawmaker Phyo Zayar Taw, after sentencing him to death for treason and terrorism.
Another huge loss for the NLD was the death on June 1 of the patron of the democracy movement, Tin Oo, at the age of 98. A former army commander-in-chief who founded the NLD with Suu Kyi in 1988, Tin Oo had stepped back from politics because of frail health and was not in detention at the time of his death.
A medical doctor, Zaw Myint Maung was first elected to parliament as an NLD member in 1990, a vote the military held two years after crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
The NLD swept to a stunning victory, even though Suu Kyi was under house arrest, but the military ignored the result and rounded up NLD members, including Zaw Myint Maung, who was jailed for 19 years in Kachin state’s Myitkyina Prison.
He won a by-election in 2012, early in a decade-long period of reform, and was again elected in a landmark win by the NLD in 2015, when Suu Kyi went on to form a government. He also won a seat in the 2020 election even though he had been diagnosed with leukemia the previous before, sources close to the family said.
Junta authorities dissolved the NLD last year after the party failed to meet a deadline to register under a strict new electoral law.
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Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.