The wife of a reporter shot by Burmese soldiers while in army custody on Wednesday denounced the military’s version of the killing, as the US voiced “serious concern” over the incident.
At an emotional press conference in Yangon, Thandar angrily dismissed an army statement on the shooting, which said that her husband was a member of a rebel group in the volatile eastern border region where he was arrested early this month.
“My husband was never a member of an armed group. His friends and everyone who knows him knows that he was a very gentle person. He was never in a fight,” she told reporters of her husband, Aung Naing, who was also known as Par Gyi.
Aung Naing was gunned down as he tried to flee detention in the town of Kyaikmaraw in Mon State on Oct. 4, according to a statement last week from the military.
The US embassy in Yangon said that it had raised “serious concern” with the Burmese government over the killing.
“We call on the government to conduct a credible and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death, and to hold the perpetrators accountable,” a US official said.
Thandar, who goes by only one name, said her husband was a freelance journalist covering unrest in the border region, where fighting between troops and rebels has flared in recent weeks.
She said that she was working to have her husband’s body exhumed to check his injuries and get a better understanding of the circumstances of his death, but was awaiting permission from local police.
Aung Naing previously had connections to the democracy movement, including acting as a security guard for former Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during mass protests in 1988 against the then-junta government, which were brutally crushed by the military.
Last week, the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Aung Naing was thought to have worked for several local news titles.
Reporters were regularly detained under the former junta, which passed long jail sentences on journalists while choking off information with some of the world’s most draconian censorship rules.
Reforms implemented by the current regime, including freeing most political prisoners and lifting pre-publication press scrutiny, have been praised by the international community as the nation opens up.
However, the jailing of several journalists this year has raised fears that Myanmar could be backsliding on press freedom.
Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent rights campaigner with the Generation 88 movement, urged the military to respond to concerns about the death swiftly and transparently.
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