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Suu Kyi’s confidante dies after contracting COVID-19 in jail

(Agencies) (The Jakarta Post)
Yangon/Singapore
Wed, July 21, 2021

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Suu Kyi’s confidante dies after contracting COVID-19 in jail

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confidante of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and stalwart democracy campaigner died Tuesday after becoming infected with COVID-19 in prison, authorities said.

Nyan Win, a veteran senior member and former spokesperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party — led by Suu Kyi — was 78, AFP reported.

He had been arrested after the Feb. 1 coup removed the NLD from power and was held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison on charges of sedition.

"U Nyan Win was found with COVID symptoms on July 11 and transferred to Yangon General Hospital [...] to get treatment," said Zaw Min Tun, spokesman of the State Administration Council — as the junta calls itself.

"He died this morning at 9 a.m. in the hospital."

Nyan Win had underlying conditions of hypertension and diabetes, he added.

A veteran politician who worked on human rights issues, Nyan Win was the sole person allowed to meet with Suu Kyi during the previous junta regime when she was held under intermittent house arrest for 15 years.

He served as a conduit for the Nobel laureate while she was imprisoned, passing on her messages from an isolated Burma — as Myanmar was formerly known as — to the outside world and her supporters.

"We have relied on him so much. I am so sad to have lost him," lawyer Khin Maung Zaw, who is part of Suu Kyi's legal team, told AFP.

"But we will transform our sorrow into our strength to move forward."

Myanmar — which has been in turmoil since the coup — is now buckling under a surge of COVID-19 cases.

Hospitals across the country are suffering from a lack of medical equipment, beds, oxygen and doctors.

Myanmar's prisons are also full, due to the junta's crackdown on dissidents, activists and NLD politicians — raising concerns of a fatal outbreak behind bars.

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said 375 people in prisons across the country have tested positive for COVID-19. About 200 of them are in hospitals, including senior NLD member Han Thar Myint who is currently in intensive care.

American journalist Danny Fenster is also being held at Insein after he was detained while trying to leave Myanmar in May.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that military-controlled Health Ministry expects half of the population to be vaccinated against COVID-19 this year, state media reported on Tuesday, a day after authorities announced a record tally of coronavirus deaths.

The inoculation target comes as the Southeast Asian nation's effort to contain an exponential rise in infections has been thrown into chaos by the turmoil since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported that only about 1.6 million people had been inoculated out of a population of 54 million but said "vaccines are constantly being imported to ensure that 100 percent of the population is fully vaccinated".

The report said that about 750,000 Chinese vaccine doses would arrive on Thursday and more over the following two days.

Myanmar registered a record 281 COVID-19 deaths on Monday, and 5,189 new infections, state-run MRTV Television reported, citing Health Ministry figures.

But medics and funeral services say the real toll is much higher than the military government's figures, and crematoriums are overloaded.

Elsewhere, Singapore will halt restaurant dining and ban gatherings of more than two people for one month from Thursday, the health ministry said, as a further rise in coronavirus cases deals a blow to the country's reopening plans.

The restrictions will be reviewed in two weeks as the country nears its milestone of vaccinating two-thirds of its population by Aug. 9.

New coronavirus cases almost doubled on Monday from the previous day and Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said 184 new infections were expected to be confirmed on Tuesday. He said vaccinations had been completed for half the city-state's population.

The government is pushing to boost take-up rates among the elderly, where 30 percent remain unvaccinated.

Singapore's daily new case numbers are only a fraction of those reported elsewhere in Southeast Asian, but the tightening of measures just days after easing them is a setback for an Asian business hub eager to move on from the pandemic.

"We have to make this preemptive tightening so that we can cut back on our overall activity levels and slow down the transmission," said Lawrence Wong, cochair of the coronavirus task force.

"The objective now is to buy us time so that we can vaccinate more people, especially our seniors."

Once the situation stabilizes, Singapore will have more lenient measures for those vaccinated, Wong said.

Singapore has ramped up testing after clusters of infections at karaoke KTV bars and a fishery port.

The KTV cluster has caused public anger and questions over policing of the lounges notorious for facilitating prostitution and gambling. They were temporarily allowed to operate as restaurants.

The government has said enforcement agencies were stretched.

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