A close ally of detained Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi died of leukaemia on Monday (Oct 7), a party source told AFP, days after being released from junta custody on health grounds.
Zaw Myint Maung, 72, who spent around two decades in prison for defying Myanmar’s military, was a close confidante of Aung San Suu Kyi and a lynchpin of the National League for Democracy (NLD).
He was arrested following the military’s latest coup in 2021 and jailed for corruption and other charges. 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 Zaw Myint Maung had died of leukaemia.
“Although we were prepared 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.”
Zaw Myint Maung was detained along with other senior NLD figures following the 2021 coup that upended a 10-year experiment with democracy and returned the Southeast Asian nation to military rule.
In 1988 he led a doctors’ strike as part of huge pro-democracy uprisings that thrust Aung San Suu Kyi into the spotlight in Myanmar – 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 a landslide in the 2015 elections, he became the chief minister of the central Mandalay region, home to Myanmar’s second city of Mandalay.
The year before the putsch Aung San Suu Kyi described him as a “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 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.
