The Myanmar government said Friday that authorities have detained a key suspect in the cold-blooded killing of human rights lawyer and ruling party advisor Ko Ni on Sunday at Yangon airport.
Acting on information from the gunman Kyi Lin, police have arrested Aung Win Zaw, 46, in connection with the murders of Ko Ni and taxi driver Ne Win, who had given chase after the attorney was shot at close range in the back of the head, a statement issued by the President’s Office said.
Ko Ni, a 63-year-old legal advisor to the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party that came into power last April, had just returned with a delegation of government and civic leaders from a trip to Indonesia where they participated in a workshop on interfaith tolerance and reconciliation.
Upon learning that the man who asked Kyi Lin to kill Ko Ni in exchange for a car had gone to southeastern Myanmar’s Kayin State, police officers set up roadblocks during the night to capture Aung Win Zaw, who is now being held as an accomplice to murder, the statement said.
He was arrested on Hpa-an Bridge at about 4 a.m. on Jan 30, it said.
Myanmar’s police and military are working together on the investigation to find others involved, it said.
The President’s Office also repeated a request that members of the public remain vigilant for acts that might disrupt social peace and tranquility and to notify authorities if they witness any religious agitation.
Social media reports about a statement that Kyi Lin allegedly gave to police had indicated that a man named Myint Swe hired him to murder the lawyer. Media reports then said the man had been arrested in southeastern Myanmar’s Karen state, though police officials there denied it.
The New York Times also reported that Myanmar police had arrested three other people in Ko Ni's assassination, including Myint Swe, near the Myanmar-Thailand border.
UN report on atrocities
The murder comes at a time when religious tension between Myanmar’s Buddhist majority and Muslim minority is running high. A crackdown in Rakhine state by Myanmar security forces on Rohingya Muslims since October has left hundreds dead and forced about 66,000 villagers to flee to safety in neighboring Bangladesh, according to United Nations estimates.
Some of the Rohingya who fled have accused Myanmar security forces of extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and arson during the lockdown in northern Rakhine.
The U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a report on Friday documenting atrocities against the Rohingya based on interviews with more than 220 people who fled.
“The attacks against the Rohingya population in the area (killings, enforced disappearances, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, deportation and forced transfer as a result of violence and persecution) seem to have been widespread as well as systematic, indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity (as the High Commissioner concluded already in June 2016),” the report said.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, told U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Friday that the government would investigate U.N. allegations of atrocities against the Rohingya, Reuters reported.
A national-level commission investigating violence in the northern part of Myanmar’s Rakhine state has already paid two visits to the affected areas but, in an interim report it issued in early January, said it had found no cases of genocide or religious persecution of Rohingya Muslims living in the region.
The commission also said that its interviews of local villagers and women had yielded insufficient evidence of rape to take legal action, though its investigations into accusations of arson, torture, and illegal arrests were still under way.
Rights groups have blasted the commission for refuting allegations of abuses by security forces deployed in the region since October.
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.