Zaw Myat Lynn is the second official to die from the deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) as photos of his dead body reveal shocking proofs of violent torture in custody which was undoubtedly the cause of his death.
The military arrested Zaw Myat Lynn, a prominent community organiser and teacher, from Yangon after midnight on March 8.
Shortly before his arrest, Zaw Myat Lynn posted a livestream on Facebook in which he said, “I want to encourage all citizens across the country that we will be protesting day and night for 24 hours against the dictatorship.” He urged people to continue fighting the army, saying “we will risk our lives to defeat them.”
Zaw Myat Lynn was at the front of local anti-coup protests. He shared many graphic videos of military torturing and firing at the peaceful protesters. People try to defend themselves from night-time raid by putting up barricades and making defences out of sandbags, but ultimately fail.
The defences of Lynn also didn’t work. The military caught him from the school compound, where he lived with his wife Phyu Phyu Win. They dragged him and forced him into a truck.
Twenty-four hours later, his wife was called to identify the dead body of her husband in a military hospital in North Yangon. Officials delivered her the body along with an official postmortem “report” claiming Zaw Myat Lynn had died while trying to escape from custody. They attributed the injuries of his body to the accident caused by falling from nine metres (30ft) height onto a sharp metal fence.
But the reality was different as she discovered after collecting the remains of her husband two days later. The photos of his dead body reveal gruesome nature of his injuries and prove that Zaw Myat Lynn had been savagely tortured to death.
The photographs show details about his harrowing final hours. Boiling water or a chemical solution seemed to have been poured into his mouth. His teeth were missing, tongue had melted and the skin on his face was peeled off. There was a fatal stab wound to the chest which had been inflicted when he was still alive. On his arms, which had been sliced open and stitched up, there was severe swelling.
One activist from Myanmar’s underground national legislative committee, the CRPH, said, “A lot of young people go out to protest and never come back. We don’t know if they are arrested or dead.”
He then added: “Lynn was targeted because he was high-profile. The military’s aim is to teach the rest of us a lesson, to say, ‘this is how you will end up’.” But he said they are determined to fight as they have a lot of social media and ways of reaching the world and to tell the horrifying story of military torture upon the protesters.
Only a few days ago, Khin Maung Latt, 58, a local NLD chairman in Yangon, also died in custody. Pictures revealed he had a cut on the back of his head and bruises indicative of brutal torture.
According to the UN, at least 138 people have been killed and over 2100 people have been arrested in the protests, since the coup on 1st February till last Monday, though protesters claim the number is higher.
