Rights groups warn Myanmar military executing more anti-coup activists

A married couple reportedly executed on Monday with five more people facing the death penalty on Tuesday.

Myanmar’s military regime has executed two anti-coup activists and plans to execute five more on September 24, rights groups have said, urging action from the international community.

Maung Kaung Htet and his wife Chan Myae Thu were executed at 4am Myanmar time (21:30 GMT) on September 23, the Women’s Peace Network said in a statement on Monday.

The pair were convicted “without due process and a fair trial” over their alleged involvement in a parcel bomb attack on Yangon’s Insein Prison in October 2022, the rights group said.

It warned that five more pro-democracy activists – Kaung Pyae Sone Oo, Zeyar Phyo, Hsann Min Aung, Kyaw Win Soe and Myat Phyo Myint – were at risk of execution on Tuesday.

The five were convicted in a closed court in May 2023 after being imprisoned since September 2021 for the alleged fatal shooting of four police officers on a Yangon train.

“By murdering more people, the junta will be further emboldened to execute the remaining over 120 other detainees also charged with sham death penalties,” the Women’s Peace Network said.

Myanmar’s military, which seized power in a coup in February 2021, shocked the world when it executed four pro-democracy activists in July 2022 in the first use of the death penalty since the late 1980s.

The crisis in Myanmar has only deepened since with the generals facing a renewed offensive from ethnic armed groups allied with pro-democracy groups across swaths of territory.

ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is leading diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis, to speak out.

“Break the silence,” said Mercy Chriesty Barends, APHR chairperson and a member of Indonesia’s House of Representatives. “ASEAN foreign ministers must speak up against the SAC execution policy.”

APHR added that it had been informed the five activists facing execution had endured torture and sexual violence without any access to reliable legal support.

“We are gravely concerned that the death penalty is being used to silence persons with dissenting views in Myanmar,” said Arlene D Brosas, APHR board member and a member of parliament in the Philippines.

There was no mention of the executions or the death sentences in Myanmar’s state media on Tuesday. Calls to military spokesman Zaw Min Tun were not answered.

Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), said the United Nations body was “closely monitoring reports of planned executions of persons sentenced to death in non-public trials” noting that such executions might constitute one or more crimes against humanity or war crimes.

“One of the most fundamental attributes of a fair trial is that it be held in public unless there are compelling national security reasons,” Koumjian said in a statement. “When proceedings are not public, this casts doubt on whether other fair trial guarantees have been respected, such as the requirement that the tribunal was impartial and independent.”

The IIMM statement did not name the people at risk of execution.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has been monitoring the crackdown since the coup, says some 20,934 people are in detention and that 123 prisoners have been sentenced to death.