Kyaw Min Yu Explained

Kyaw Min Yu
Other Names:Ko Jimmy
Native Name Lang:my
Birth Date:13 February 1969
Birth Place:Shan State, Burma[1]
Death Place:Insein Prison, Yangon, Myanmar
Death Cause:Execution by hanging
Spouse:Nilar Thein
Children:1
Criminal Penalty:Death
Criminal Status:Executed

Kyaw Min Yu (Burmese: ကျော်မင်းယု; also known as Ko Jimmy; 13 February 1969 – 23 July 2022) was a Burmese writer, political prisoner, and a member of the 88 Generation Students Group. He was executed in July 2022[2] after being sentenced to death for activism against the junta that seized power in a coup in 2021.

Career

Activism

Kyaw Min Yu rose to prominence during the 8888 Uprising, as a student activist.[3] [4] He was imprisoned for 15 years, from 1988 to 2003, for participating in the 8888 Uprising,[5] and later spent another five years in prison after protesting fuel price hikes with the 88 Generation Students Group in August 2007.[6]

Writing

He wrote the self-help book Making Friendship (Burmese: မိတ်ဖြစ်ဆွေဖြစ်), which became a bestseller, in 2005.[7] On 6 September 2012, he published a novel, The Moon in Inle Lake (Burmese: လမင်းဆန္ဒာအင်းလေးကန်), which had been written in 2010 during a prison sentence in Taunggyi. While serving a sentence in Taunggyi, he wrote a number of political post-modern short stories, published in Japan, under the pen name Pan Pu Lwin Pyin. Ko Jimmy translated numerous novels, including Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, into Burmese while in prison.

2021 Myanmar coup d'état and execution

On 13 February 2021, in the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Kyaw Min Yu and six other high profile individuals,[8] namely Min Ko Naing, Myo Yan Naung Thein, Insein Aung Soe, Mg Mg Aye, Pencilo, and Lynn Lynn were charged and issued arrest warrants under section 505(b) of the Myanmar Penal Code by the State Administration Council for inciting unrest against the state and threatening "public tranquility" through their social media posts.[9] [10] [11] [12] He was arrested in Dagon Township on 23 October.[13] On 23 January 2022, the Myanmar Military Tribunal sentenced Yu to death under the country's Counterterrorism Law for contacting the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, National Unity Government (NUG), and People's Defense Force (PDF).[14] On 23 July 2022, it was announced that Yu had been executed along with Phyo Zeya Thaw and two others.

Personal life

Yu was born 13 February 1969, in Shan State in eastern Myanmar. At the time of the 8888 Uprising he was a physics student at Rangoon Arts & Sciences University (later re-named the University of Yangon) .[15]

He was married to Nilar Thein, a political activist.[16] They met while incarcerated after the 8888 Uprising and wedded after they were both released in 2004. The couple have a daughter, Phyu Nay Kyi Min Yu.[17]

Death

Yu was 53 years old when he was executed in July 2022.[18]

On 28 July 2022, the G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and the European Union released a statement strongly condemning Kyaw Min Yu's execution by the military junta.[19]

Publications

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Political Prisoner Profile No. 0050. 7 August 2008. Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). 3 April 2012.
  2. News: 2022-07-25 . Myanmar junta executes four democracy activists . en . Reuters . 2022-07-25.
  3. News: 2014-06-06. The Story of Ko Jimmy. en. NPR.org. 2021-11-05.
  4. Web site: Myanmar activist arrested in junta raid: wife. 2021-11-05. sg.news.yahoo.com. en-SG. 5 November 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211105052607/https://sg.news.yahoo.com/myanmar-activist-arrested-junta-raid-130013786.html. dead.
  5. News: Andrews. Jim. 4 September 2007. A Very Special Kind of Courage. The Irrawaddy. 3 April 2012. 24 January 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110124021409/http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=8490&page=1. dead.
  6. News: Beech. Hannah. 16 January 2012. With U.S.-Burma Ties on the Mend, Will a Lifting of Sanctions Be Next?. Global Spin. TIME. 3 April 2012.
  7. Web site: 2012-09-17. Another student leader, another book. 2021-11-05. The Myanmar Times. 26 July 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220726221654/https://www.mmtimes.com/lifestyle/1467-another-student-leader-another-book.html. dead.
  8. News: Tatmadaw charges activists, public figures for crimes against the state . The Myanmar Times . 14 February 2021 . 18 February 2021 . 17 February 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210217062707/https://www.mmtimes.com/news/tatmadaw-charges-activists-public-figures-crimes-against-state.html . dead .
  9. News: ကိုမင်းကိုနိုင်၊ ကိုဂျင်မီ၊ အဆိုတော်လင်းလင်း ၊ အင်းစိန်အောင်စိုး၊ ကိုမျိုးရန်နောင်သိမ်း၊ ပန်ဆယ်လို နှင့် မောင်မောင်အေး တို့အား ရာဇသတ်ကြီး ပုဒ်မ ၅၀၅(ခ)ဖြင့် တရားစွဲထားပြီး ဖမ်းဝရမ်းထုတ်ထားကြောင်း တပ်မတော် ကြေညာ . Eleven Media Group . 13 February 2021 . my.
  10. News: ကိုမင်းကိုနိုင်အပါအဝင် နာမည်ကြီး လူပုဂ္ဂိလ် (၇)ဦးကို ဖမ်းဝရမ်းထုတ် [Issued an arrest warrant of 7 famous people including Min Ko Naing] ]. . 13 February 2021 . my . 13 February 2021 . 18 February 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210218051057/http://thevoicemyanmar.com/index.php/latest-news/45746-mii . dead .
  11. News: ကိုမင်းကိုနိုင်အပါအဝင် ခုနစ်ဦးကို စစ်အစိုးရ ဖမ်းဝရမ်းထုတ် . Radio Free Asia . 13 February 2021 . my.
  12. News: ကိုမင်းကိုနိုင်၊ ကိုဂျင်မီ၊ အဆိုတော်လင်းလင်းတို့ အပါအဝင် (၇) ဦးကို ဖမ်းဝရမ်းထုတ် . Duwun . my. 13 February 2021.
  13. Web site: 2021-10-24. Myanmar junta arrests 88 Generation leader Ko Jimmy. 2021-11-05. Myanmar NOW. en.
  14. Web site: Myanmar military tribunal sentences prominent activist, former lawmaker to death. 2022-01-24. Radio Free Asia. en.
  15. News: Murphy . Brian . Kyaw Min Yu, Myanmar activist known as Ko Jimmy, executed at 53 . 29 July 2022 . Washington Post . 26 July 2022.
  16. Web site: 2012-05-28. Home of the free: the Burmese family that democracy brought back. 2021-11-05. The Independent. Patrick. Bodenham. en.
  17. Web site: 2010-12-20. ၈၈ မျိုးဆက် ခေါင်းဆောင် မနီလာသိန်း ထောင်ပြောင်းပေးရေး တောင်းဆို. 2021-11-05. Radio Free Asia. my.
  18. News: Myanmar: Military executes four democracy activists including ex-MP . 29 July 2022 . BBC News . 25 July 2022.
  19. Web site: G7 Foreign Ministers' Statement on the Myanmar Military Junta's Executions . 2022-08-05 . United States Department of State . en.

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