Suu Kyi's close ally, Zaw Myint Maung, dies hours after being released by junta
YANGON, Myanmar – A close ally of incarcerated Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi died of leukemia on Monday (October 7), a party source said, only days after being released from junta detention on medical grounds.
Zaw Myint Maung, 72, was a close friend of Aung San Suu Kyi and a pillar of the National League for Democracy (NLD).
He spent nearly two decades in prison for challenging Myanmar’s military.
He was arrested after the military’s latest coup in 2021 and imprisoned for corruption and other crimes. He was just released for health reasons.
“We received confirmation of his death.
“It’s a big loss for us because he was one of our NLD vice-chairmen,” a senior party official told AFP, seeking anonymity to speak with the media.
According to the report, Zaw Myint Maung died from leukemia.
“We were prepared to lose him one day, but we are sorry to lose him in this tough situation. We must move forward for democracy with the leaders we have.”
Zaw Myint Maung was jailed, along with other key NLD members, during the 2021 coup, which ended a 10-year democratic experiment and returned the Southeast Asian nation to military control.
In 1988, he organized a physicians’ strike as part of a massive pro-democracy rebellion that catapulted Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence in Myanmar, then known as Burma.
In 1989, he resigned from his position in a university biochemistry department to join the NLD.
The military later imprisoned him for over two decades for his activism.
After the generals implemented democratic reforms and the NLD won a landslide victory in the 2015 elections, he was appointed chief minister of the central Mandalay area, which includes Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city.
Aung San Suu Kyi hailed him as a “real hardcore comrade who has been together with us since the beginning (of our party)” the year before the putsch.
The European Union delegation to Myanmar said Zaw Myint Maung had been accused on “false political grounds” and condemned the “inhumane and degrading” conditions of his confinement.
“His pardon… just hours before his death, was not a gesture of genuine clemency,” it posted on X.