Aung Myint Soe, a ward chairman of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party in the town of Ahthoke in Ayeyarwady Region, was killed on Sunday just days after his arrest by regime authorities, sources close to his family said.
The 50-year-old chair of the NLD office for Ward-4 in Ahthoke was arrested on August 30. Junta authorities informed his family of his death on Sunday evening and pressured them to sign a document acknowledging the receipt of his body.
On the morning of August 30, a bomb was found in a restaurant near the town’s entry gate, seemingly placed there with the intent to harm township police commander Thet Soe Oo. Over the next two days, authorities detained at least ten residents of the town, including the NLD ward chairman, on suspicion of a connection with the bombing attempt.
Four days after his arrest, a ward administration official informed Aung Myint Soe’s family that he had been hospitalised. That evening, the authorities informed them of Aung Myint Soe’s death as they were making preparations to cremate his body, a source close to the family said.
“Only when they were preparing the cremation did they go to the family to inform them what had happened. They asked the relatives to sign a coroner’s inquest book to vouch for the handling of the body,” the source said, while declining to say who asked the family to sign the book.
“After the cremation, they were allowed to take away the ashes. They brought them to a grave at a local cemetery,” the associate of the family said.
Aung Myint Soe’s body had a three-inch gash at the back of the head, with blood visible on his nose and mouth and several more injuries on his back, according to the same source.
Despite his visible injuries, authorities told Aung Myint Soe’s family that he had died of asphyxiation.
The Kyonpyaw District police carried out Aung Myint Soe’s arrest. Local residents said he may have been held at the interrogation centre run by the army’s Light Infantry Battalion 36 in Kyonpyaw, but Myanmar Now could not verify this independently.
The arrest was Aung Myint Soe’s third since the 2021 military coup; he had been detained twice before for his participation in anti-coup protests but was released after both incidents. Regime authorities had tortured and killed him out of animosity after the latest arrest, one of Aung Myint Soe’s political colleagues said.
“As long as we are not completely liberated from the brutal military dictatorship, we will all have to face such tragedies every day. I just want to ask everyone to participate in the movement and fight against this evil system,” he added.
As of five days after their arrest, the other residents of Ahthoke detained for suspected involvement in the attempted bomb attack had not been released.
Aung Myint Soe is survived by three daughters, all under 20, and his mother, 75. He was a retired police sub-inspector and owned a restaurant in Ahthoke in addition to having served as a local party official.
The NLD party, in which Aung Myint Soe served as a ward chair, ran a democratically elected government in Myanmar for five years before its ouster in the 2021 coup and final dissolution by the military regime in March of 2023. The regime has ruthlessly targeted and arrested NLD leaders, members, and prominent supporters as well as other pro-democracy activists.
Military authorities have killed 4,029 people and arrested 24,631 in Myanmar since the coup, according to information collected by the monitoring organisation Assistance Association for Political Prisoners as of September 1 of this year.
