U Phyo Zeya Thaw is a Burmese hip-hop pioneer whose pro-democracy lyrics led to a parliamentary career and after last year’s military coup in Myanmar, as a leader of the resistance, he made his debut in Yangon, Myanmar. He was executed on Saturday by the military junta. He was 41 years old.
The execution of him and three other political prisoners was announced on Monday in news outlets controlled by the military government. His mother, Daw Kin Win May, confirmed his death.
Four men were convicted of terrorism charges in a trial widely denounced as a hoax. The four executions, including that of U Kyaw Min Yu, a veteran pro-democracy activist known as Ko Jimi, were the first in Myanmar in decades.
Already a well-known democracy activist, Phyo Zeya Thaw led an underground resistance group in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital. Loosely grouped as the People’s Defense Forces, many such private militias are led by deposed MPs, pro-democracy activists, and sometimes doctors and lawyers.
After Phyo Zeya Thaw was arrested on terrorism charges last November, authorities released photos of him surrounded by weapons he planned to use to kill members of the military. did.
His defenders challenged the authenticity of the photo.Phyo Zeya Thaw’s face in the photo showed visible bruising and swelling.
“I laughed when I saw the weapon in the picture,” said Ma Thazin Nyunt Aung, Pyo Zeya So’s fiancée. “The Military Council is an organization that can never be trusted because it never tells the truth,” she said.
Fio Zeya So, popularly known as Zayar So (pronounced Zayar So), was adept at transforming his career.
In the early 2000s, towards the end of the military’s first Tekken reign, he led one of Myanmar’s first hip-hop groups and co-founded Generation Wave. medium of objection.
“Hip-hop allows you to express yourself without fear,” Pyo Zeya So said in a 2011 interview shortly after being released from his first prison sentence. “Music encourages us.”
As the ruling party began to open up the country, allowing members of the long-repressed National League for Democracy to run for parliament in the 2012 by-elections, Pyo Zeya Tou shed her baggy hip-hop outfit. and reformed myself as a politician. For the understated shirts and sarongs of the political class, his sideways baseball cap transformed into a neat hairstyle befitting his executive of the business.
He won a seat in the NLD, the party of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
He was a rare young face in a party whose supporters have aged as they battle the military generals who have ruled Myanmar for nearly 50 years, an era of international isolation and destruction.
“I was just an activist who fought against injustice,” Pyo Zeya So said shortly after winning the election. “When I was in prison, I really thought about what I wanted. I joined the NLD because I wanted to end injustice.”
He befriended Aung San Suu Kyi, traveled with her abroad and soothed her often grumpy dog.
“He is almost like a son to her,” U Win Htein, a now-imprisoned NLD elder, said of Phyo Zeya Thaw in 2019. He believes her and she believes him. “
Aung San Suu Kyi, who became Myanmar’s de facto leader after the 2015 and 2020 elections, was also jailed and convicted of crimes that Western governments and human rights groups say were fabricated. .
Phyo Zeya Thaw was born on 26th March 1981 in Yangon. His father was the president of a dental school and his mother a dentist. In his ninth grade, he told his parents that he wanted to become an artist. They encouraged him to pursue more traditional studies.
A year later, he told his mother, Khin Win May, that he wanted to become a DJ.
“I asked him to explain what a DJ is,” she said. he obliged.
She survived him with his father, U Mya Thaw. His younger sister, Daw Phyu Pa Pa Thaw. And his fiancée, Thazin Nyung Aung.
At the time, Myanmar was one of the most closed countries on earth, shaped under the incompetent rule of generals. Military secret police terrorized residents. Listening to foreign radio broadcasts or holding foreign currency can lead to lengthy prison sentences.
While graduating from university in English, Phyo Zeya Thaw opened a recording studio and started forming Myanmar’s first major hip-hop band. The band was called Acid and his musical name was Nitric Acid.
In 2007, amid soaring fuel prices and an economic crisis, Buddhist monks led mass protests in Yangon and other cities, overturning alms bowls to show their disillusionment with the military regime. Young protesters syncopated the rebellion with local hip-hop.
As was the case with previous large demonstrations, the military eventually responded with gunfire. Phyo Zeya Thaw then co-founded Generation Wave, a secret band of anti-government hip-hoppers and youth activists.
He was arrested in 2008 and found guilty of breaking the law and illegal possession of about $20 worth of foreign currency.
After being released from prison in 2011, he still appeared at the occasional gig, but began to focus on promoting the National League for Democracy.
He was elected to parliament in 2012 and re-elected in 2015 after the military agreed to share power with civilian authorities, this time built by generals to replace Yangon earlier this century. I was selected to represent the district of Naypyidaw, the capital. Military-affiliated parties were shocked by the defeat at home.
Phyo Zeya Thaw kept himself busy as an assistant to Aung San Suu Kyi, assisting him in writing briefings on legislation and in peace negotiations with ethnic minority rebels. He remained loyal even though she drew international condemnation for supporting her army when she launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims.
During the parliamentary season in Nay Pyi Taw, Phyo Zeya Thaw lived in a simple concrete dormitory for parliamentarians. His room contained only a hard bed with a mosquito net and a table piled high with legislative papers. There was little evidence of his life as one of Myanmar’s most famous hip-hop artists.
“He liked singing more than politics,” said his fiancé Thazin Nyung Aung. “But he did his duty to the end.”
Phyo Zeya Thaw has declined to run for re-election in 2020, hoping to return to rap. That year, the National League for Democracy won by an even larger margin. The military alliance party was humiliated.
The rebellion broke out in less than three months, and the country’s top leaders were quickly arrested and imprisoned.
Phyo Zeya Thaw attended a rally as mass protests against the new military regime took to the streets. But he and others went underground as soldiers killed unarmed protesters with a single shot in the head and targeted even small children.
His resistance activities are not publicly known. He was arrested in November when his 300 soldiers stormed the Yangon housing project where he was hiding.
The military has accused the four men executed Saturday of being responsible for the deaths of at least 50 civilians and soldiers, but has not publicly presented proof.
In January a junta court sentenced Phyo Zeya Thaw and three other activists to death.
“These death sentences handed down by the illegal military regime’s illegal courts are a cowardly attempt to instill fear in the people of Myanmar,” the UN said. statement..
Phyo Zeya Thaw was hanged before dawn on Saturday along with three other democracy activists.
“I will always be proud of my son because he gave his life for his country,” said Ms Kin Win May. “He is a martyr who tried to bring democracy to Myanmar.”