Close ally of Myanmar’s Suu Kyi dies of leukaemia

Yangon - A close ally of detained Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi died of leukaemia on Oct 7, a party source told AFP, days after being released from junta custody on health grounds.

Dr Zaw Myint Maung, 72, who spent around two decades in prison for defying Myanmar’s military, was a close confidante of Ms Suu Kyi and a linchpin of the National League for Democracy (NLD).

He was arrested following the military’s latest coup in 2021 and jailed for corruption. He was recently released on health grounds.

“We got confirmation of his death. It’s a big loss for us as he was one of our NLD vice-chairmen,” a senior party source told AFP, requesting anonymity to speak to the media.

The source said Dr Zaw Myint Maung had died of leukaemia.

“Although we were prepared that we might lose him one day, we are sorry for losing him in this difficult situation. We have to move forward for democracy with the leaders we have.”

Dr Zaw Myint Maung was detained along with other senior NLD figures following the 2021 coup, which upended a 10-year experiment with democracy and returned the South-east Asian nation to military rule.

In 1988, he led a doctors’ strike as part of huge pro-democracy uprisings that thrust Ms Suu Kyi into the spotlight in Myanmar, which was then called Burma.

In 1989, he left his job in a university biochemistry department and joined the NLD.

The military later imprisoned him for around two decades for his activism.

After the generals enacted democratic reforms and the NLD won by a landslide in the 2015 elections, he became the chief minister of the Mandalay region.

The year before the putsch, Ms Suu Kyi described him as “real hardcore and a comrade who has been together with us since the very beginning (of our party)”.

The European Union’s delegation to Myanmar said Dr Zaw Myint Maung had been charged on “fallacious political grounds” and slammed the “inhumane and degrading” conditions of his detention.

“His pardon... just hours before his death, was not a gesture of genuine clemency,” it said in a post on X.

Decimated party

The 2021 coup sparked widespread armed opposition to military rule that the junta has failed to crush more than three years later.

Almost three million people have been forced from their homes by the conflict, according to the UN.

The junta’s crackdown on dissent has decimated the senior ranks of the NLD.

Months after the coup, former NLD spokesman and Suu Kyi confidante Nyan Win died of Covid-19 while being held in military custody for sedition.

In 2022, another former lawmaker was executed by the junta, in Myanmar’s first use of capital punishment in decades.

In March 2023, the junta dissolved the NLD for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, removing it from polls it has indicated it may hold in 2025.

Ms Suu Kyi, 79, is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges ranging from corruption to not respecting Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

Rights groups say her closed-door trial was a sham designed to remove her from the political scene.

In September, the Italian media reported that Pope Francis has offered refuge on Vatican territory to Ms Suu Kyi, who led the government ousted by the military in 2021. AFP