#give #Myanmars #executed #activists
A hip-hop pioneer who has vowed to “never surrender” and a democracy activist who has said prison is his second home – Myanmar’s execution of two prominent democracy activists will only keep the flame of resistance burning, their families say .
AFP follows the lives of Kyaw Min Yu – better known as “Ko Jimmy” – and Phyo Zeya Thaw, whose executions caused shock and anger in Myanmar and around the world.
– ‘Never give up’ –
Phyo Zeya Thaw burst onto the public stage in the early 2000s as a dragon-tattooed hip-hop pioneer whose subversive rhymes targeted the then-ruling junta.
The band circumvented notorious military censorship by distributing fake copies of songs recorded in underground studios or performed in private stage shows.
“We will never change, never give up, never give up,” his band Acid raps in one song.
“We’ll come out full force every morning.”
Jailed in 2008 for membership of an illegal organization and possession of foreign currency, he later told AFP that democracy poster boy Aung San Suu Kyi – his “real hero” – helped him survive three years in prison.
He later became close with Suu Kyi and traveled with her to Europe in 2012, where she eventually received the Nobel Prize that propelled her into the international spotlight two decades earlier.
In the 2015 election won by her National League for Democracy, the former junta prisoner won a seat in the military-built capital Naypyidaw.
“You’re very young, you’re a hip-hop artist and you’re an ex-con. How can you be an MP?” he told AFP in an interview after his election victory.
“I hear that quite often.”
He was arrested by the junta in November last year and accused of orchestrating several attacks on regime forces, including a gun attack on a Yangon commuter train that killed five police officers.
After a closed trial, he was sentenced to death in January.
“My son was not a thief or a thug,” his mother told Radio Free Asia after hearing about the executions.
“I am proud of him for giving his life for the country… If I could get his ashes or his remains, I would happily dig a grave for him and then put an inscription on it.”
– ‘Never die in our hearts’ –
Kyaw Min Yu – known as “Ko Jimmy” – rose to prominence during Myanmar’s 1988 student uprising against the country’s former military regime.
The writer and organizer spent more than a dozen years in prison under the previous junta for his pro-democracy activism, calling the imprisonment his “home away from home”.
But prison only made him a staunch advocate of democracy for his people.
“The government is trying to keep them out,” he told AFP in 2006 while organizing a campaign during a rare period of freedom.
But “they’re always looking for a way to get involved in politics.”
In Love Letters from Prison, a romance blossomed with activist Nilar Thein and led to their marriage shortly after their release in 2004.
Months after the birth of their daughter, he was arrested again during the monk-led “Saffron” protests in 2007, and the pair only reunited when they were both pardoned in a 2012 amnesty.
His death was “blatant homicide,” his wife told RFA.
“He wrote a good record for himself and he will never die in our hearts.”
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