BANGKOK (AP) — Zaw Myint Maung, a senior member of Myanmar’s former ruling party arrested during the 2021 military takeover, died Monday while serving a prison sentence that was considered politically motivated. He was 72.
He was a close colleague of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and spokesperson of her National League for Democracy party. He had been a second vice president and chief minister of the central Mandalay region before the army seized control of the government in 2021, arresting him, Suu Kyi and many top members of her NLD party and government.
Zaw Myint Maung had been jailed at least twice under previous governments for his political activities.
He had had leukemia since 2019. His death was confirmed by Tun Kyi, a party colleague from Mandalay, and another friend, who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities.
In a statement expressing condolences, the National Unity Government, the main shadow opposition group organizing against army rule, lauded Zaw Myint Maung for being “unwaveringly committed to the democratic cause, fighting alongside the people and other democratic forces to dismantle military dictatorship.”
The NLD won a landslide victory in Myanmar's 2020 election, but the army seized power Feb. 1, 2021, the day it was supposed to begin a second five-year term in office. The country now is enmeshed in civil war between the military and pro-democracy forces allied with armed ethnic minority groups.
Zaw Myint Maung was serving a prison sentence of 29 years after being convicted in closed court in 2021 and 2022 on charges of violating coronavirus restrictions, corruption, sedition and election fraud. The charges are similar to those against other NLD members, including Suu Kyi, and are widely regarded as having been fabricated to sideline the party and legitimize the military's takeover.
Zaw Myint Maung often was transferred to Mandalay General Hospital from Obo prison to be treated for his condition.
The friends who confirmed his death said prison officials came to the hospital Sunday to read Zaw Myint Maung an official letter saying the military had granted him amnesty. A copy of the purported letter posted on social media said the amnesty was granted as an act of leniency and compassion.
He was not the first senior NLD member to die after being imprisoned by the military government.
Nyan Win, who had been a member of the NLD central executive committee as well as a confidante of Suu Kyi, died in July 2021 after getting COVID-19 in Insein prison in Yangon.
The NLD was dissolved along with 39 other political parties in 2023 for failing to reapply under a new party registration law. The military has said there will be an election next year but has not set a date.
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FILE - Zaw Myint Maung, right, an imprisoned politician and a close colleague of Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, center, walks with her and Win Myint, left, who was then selected as speaker for the lower house, during a regular session of Parliament on Jan. 28, 2016, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
FILE - Former Chief Minister of the Mandalay Region Zaw Myint Maung attends a press conference in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on Jan. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
FILE - Zaw Myint Maung, center, an imprisoned politician and a close colleague of Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, right, talks with Suu Kyi and Win Myint, left, at Parliament in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on June 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
FILE - Zaw Myint Maung, left, an imprisoned politician and a close colleague of Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, right, talks with Suu Kyi at Parliament in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on July 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
RE'IM, Israel (AP) — Israelis were holding vigils and somber ceremonies on Monday to mark a year since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, the deadliest in the country’s history, which sparked the war in Gaza and scarred Israelis indelibly.
The surprise cross-border attack, which caught Israel unprepared on a major Jewish holiday, shattered Israelis’ sense of security and shook their faith in their leaders and their military.
Its aftershocks still ripple one year later. The war in Gaza rages on and Israel is fighting a new war against Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel on Oct. 8. There is also an escalating conflict with Iran — which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups — that threatens to drag the region into a far more dangerous conflagration.
And on Monday, Hamas showed that it was still putting up a fight. It launched rockets that set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv, as well as closer to the Gaza border.
In Gaza, which is still buckling under the weight of the ongoing war, no formal commemorative event is planned. The massive destruction and displacement are a constant reminder of the retaliatory Israeli assault on the territory, which has no end in sight.
Israelis were flocking to ceremonies, cemeteries and memorial sites around the country, remembering the hundreds of victims, the dozens of hostages still in captivity and the soldiers wounded or killed trying to save them.
At 6:29 a.m. — the exact minute Hamas launched its attack — the families of those killed at the Nova music festival, joined by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, gathered at the site where almost 400 revelers were gunned down and from where many others were taken hostage.
After briefly playing the same trance music that was blared during the festival, hundreds of family members and friends of the victims stood for a moment of silence. One woman’s piercing wail broke the silence as booms echoed from the fighting in Gaza, just a few kilometers away.
“When we are here, we are near our loved ones. This is the time they danced and fled,” said Sigal Bar-On, whose niece, Yuval Bar-On, 25, and her fiancé Moshe Shuva, 34, were supposed to get married in December 2023.
At 6:31 a.m., four projectiles were launched from Gaza toward the very Israeli communities that came under fierce assault last year, the Israeli military said. The ceremony was not disrupted.
Marking the moment Hamas' attack began a year ago, the families of hostages still held in Gaza — about 100, a third of whom are said to be dead — gathered near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence and stood during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from the the most solemn dates on the Israeli calendar, Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day.
“We are here to remind (the hostages) that we haven’t forgotten them,” said Shiri Albag, whose daughter Liri is among the captives. Her message to Netanyahu: “We wont let you rest until all of them are back, every last one of them," she told the crowd, which hoisted posters bearing the faces of the hostages.
A group representing the families of hostages announced that another captive was dead. Idan Shtivi, 28, was snatched from the Nova music festival and was believed to be alive. Israeli media reported he was killed during the attack and his body was taken into Gaza.
The flags at the Israeli Knesset were lowered to half-staff and an official state ceremony focusing on acts of bravery and hope is set to be aired on Monday evening. The ceremony was prerecorded without an audience — apparently to avoid potential disruptions — in the southern city of Ofakim, where over two dozen Israelis were killed.
But anger at the government’s failure to prevent the attack and enduring frustration that it has not returned the remaining hostages prompted the families of those killed and taken captive to hold a separate event in Tel Aviv.
That event had been set to draw tens of thousands of people but was scaled back drastically over prohibitions on large gatherings due to the threat of missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah.
Hamas’ attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged some 250 into Gaza as hostages, continues to cast a shadow over daily life in Israel. For the dozens of hostages still in captivity, there is no end in sight to their struggle. Border communities have been upended and tens of thousands were displaced. Soldiers are being killed in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel faces ongoing international criticism over its wartime conduct, with two world courts examining its actions.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the territory's 2.3 million population and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has led to widespread hunger. It has also left the tiny coastal enclave ravaged beyond recognition as U.S.-led cease-fire efforts have repeatedly sputtered.
Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.
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People visit the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, on the one-year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
People visit the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, on the one-year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Victoria stands in front a picture of her sister, Yulia Waxer Daunt, as she visits the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, on the one-year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Victoria stands in front a picture of her sister, Yulia Waxer Daunt, as she visits the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, on the one-year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
An attendant walks through a mural with portraits of the victims at the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, on the one-year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Families and supporters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza wave photos of their loved ones and the Israeli and U.S. flags during a protest calling for their return, outside a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and families of hostages, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Friday, March 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
People cross a bridge with the date 7.10, marking the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
People light candles at a memorial for the victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas cross-border attack on Israel, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
