First published July 25, 2022.
In late July 2022, Myanmar's military government announced that it had executed four political prisoners: the veteran democracy campaigner Kyaw Min Yu, known as Ko Jimmy; the hip-hop artist turned lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw; and two men, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw. They were hanged at Insein Prison in Yangon after closed-door military trials. These were the country's first judicial executions since the late 1980s, and they drew condemnation from the United Nations, the G7, the European Union and human rights groups.
Below is a clear account of who the four men were, what they were accused of, how the trials were conducted, and why the executions marked a turning point in the crisis that followed the 2021 coup.
What happened and when
State media reported that the sentences had been carried out under counterterrorism legislation, saying the men had directed and organised what the junta called brutal and inhumane terror acts
. The authorities gave no date for the hangings and did not return the bodies to the families, who learned the news from state media.
The death sentences had been handed down months earlier, in January 2022 for Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy, by military tribunals that sat inside the prison. Lawyers and families had very limited access, and there was no public hearing. In June 2022, the junta had already signalled that the executions would go ahead, prompting appeals for clemency from abroad that went unheeded.
Who the four men were
Kyaw Min Yu (Ko Jimmy)
Born in 1969 in Shan State, Ko Jimmy became a student leader during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising and was a prominent member of the 88 Generation Students group. He spent about 15 years in prison after 1988 and several more after joining protests against fuel price rises in 2007. He married fellow activist Nilar Thein, whom he met through the movement. After the 2021 coup he was charged over social media posts, arrested in Yangon in October 2021, and sentenced to death for alleged links to the opposition National Unity Government and its armed wing.
Phyo Zeya Thaw
Born in Yangon in 1981, Phyo Zeya Thaw rose to fame with the band Acid, which released what is regarded as Myanmar's first hip-hop album in 2000. His lyrics criticised military rule and he was jailed in the late 2000s. He later joined Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy and served as a member of the lower house of parliament from 2012 until the coup. He was arrested in November 2021.
Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw
Less is publicly known about the other two men. The authorities accused them of killing a person alleged to have been a military informer. As with the others, the evidence was presented only to a closed military court and has not been independently examined.
The 2021 coup and the crackdown that followed
Myanmar, also known as Burma, was ruled by the military for most of the period after 1962. A gradual opening began in 2011, and Aung San Suu Kyi's party won elections in 2015 and again in November 2020. On 1 February 2021, the armed forces seized power, claiming without credible evidence that the 2020 vote had been fraudulent. Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and many elected officials were detained.
Mass peaceful protests and a civil disobedience movement were met with live fire. Monitoring groups such as the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that security forces had killed more than 2,000 civilians in the first year and a half and detained many thousands more. Some opponents formed armed groups that later grew into a nationwide resistance. Military courts handed down dozens of death sentences, many in absentia; at least 86 were recorded in 2021 alone, according to Amnesty International figures.
How the world reacted
Tom Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, said he was outraged and devastated, adding: These depraved acts must be a turning point for the international community.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the UN human rights office also condemned the hangings.
On 28 July 2022, the foreign ministers of the G7 and the EU's foreign policy chief issued a joint statement strongly condemning the executions. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reacted with shock and urged governments to increase pressure on the junta. Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which had tried to broker a peace plan, member governments voiced deep concern and the bloc kept Myanmar's junta leaders out of its top-level summits.
The families' grief
Relatives described being given no warning. Phyo Zeya Thaw's mother told reporters that she had spoken with her son by video link only days earlier. He had seemed well and cheerful and had asked her to bring his reading glasses, a dictionary and some money. She had delivered those items to the prison on the day the news broke and said she could not believe he had been killed.
Families were not allowed to see the bodies or hold funerals, a decision that deepened public anger. Inside Myanmar, people marked the deaths with small, quick protests and online tributes despite the risk of arrest.
Why the executions mattered
Myanmar had kept the death penalty on its books but had not carried out a judicial execution since 1988, making it an abolitionist country in practice. Resuming hangings sent a clear message that the military was prepared to escalate, and it removed any doubt that dozens of others on death row could face the same fate.
It also hardened positions. Opponents of the junta argued that negotiation was impossible with a government willing to kill well-known political prisoners, while foreign governments that had hoped for dialogue faced pressure to toughen sanctions. The conflict that followed the coup has since displaced millions of people.
For readers looking for a short answer: four political prisoners were hanged in Myanmar in July 2022 after secret military trials, in the first executions there in more than three decades, and the move was widely condemned as an attempt to frighten the democracy movement into silence.
Sources: Wikipedia: Kyaw Min Yu; Wikipedia: Phyo Zeya Thaw; Wikipedia: Capital punishment in Myanmar; original reporting by the BBC (July 2022).
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