Burmese junta sentences seven students to death, UN says

Myanmar’s military junta this week handed down at least seven new death sentences, bringing the number of people on death row in the troubled Southeast Asian country to 139, the UN said.

Those sentenced are male students, and were sentenced by a military court in a closed-door trial, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said in a statement.

The AFP tried to contact from abroad, without success, a spokesman for the board to confirm this information.

Burma has been in chaos since the February 2021 coup that overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, ending a brief period of democracy.

According to a Burmese watchdog group, nearly 2,300 civilians have been killed since then and more than 11,600 are in detention as part of the crackdown to stamp out any form of dissent.

"Using the death penalty as a political tool to crush the opposition, the military confirms its contempt for the efforts of ASEAN and the international community to end the violence and create the conditions for political dialogue"Turk said.

The diplomat was referring to the efforts of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to put an end to the crisis.

According to Burmese media, the seven students sentenced to death, from Rangoon, were arrested in April on charges of involvement in a shooting at a bank.

"Imposing the death penalty on students is an act of revenge by the military"said the Dagon University Alumni Union.

The UN said it was investigating reports of four other death sentences handed down Thursday against young militants.

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"The military continues to hold trials in secret courts, in violation of basic principles of fair trial and in contradiction with fundamental guarantees of independence and impartiality"stressed the UN High Commissioner.

According to Türk, hearings in these courts sometimes last a few minutes and defendants are often deprived of the assistance of a lawyer and contacts with their families.

In July, four people were executed, in the first applications of the death penalty in Burma in three decades.

They included former MP Phyo Zeya Thaw and pro-democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, was sentenced in various trials to 26 years in prison, mainly on corruption charges that the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate rejects.

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